PayPal said on Friday that it is rolling out a new mobile software development kit that will let Apple iOS device users make in-app purchases via the company's payment service without having to switch apps.
Announced to through a blog post from the SXSW Festival, PayPal's new SDK also expands customer payment options to include the company's card.io technology, which allows users to take a picture of their credit card instead of manually inputting the information.
As noted by The Next Web, with the new software, developers can create apps that offer an enhanced user experience. Currently, when a purchaser pays through PayPal in a third-party app, they are taken to either Safari or PayPal's own iOS app to complete the transfer.
“Developers should have the freedom to focus on innovating for their customers, not spending time worrying about handling the complex task of payments,†PayPal CTO James Barrese said in the post. “But we listened when our developers said they wanted better capabilities from us, and now we’re doubling down on our developer programs to deliver the best tools in the industry.â€
In addition to the in-app integration, the e-payment giant introduced new JavaScript PayPal buttons that can be implemented with just five lines of code.
Finally, PayPal is beta-launching REST, OAuth and JSON versions of its most popular APIs, payment processing and immediate settlement, to help streamline integration for developers.
In the post, Barrese noted that the SDK will first be rolled out to iOS devs, with support for other platforms coming down the road.