Garage Trail Sale And Other Unexpected Places To Use PayPal

PayPal has become the trusted way to pay for goods and services online since its development in the early days of eCommerce. Thanks to tech innovations it is now so much more than a way to pay for your eBay shopping basket.

While card payments still remain the most frequently used for transactions in Australia, PayPal is now accepted in a wide variety of scenarios.

1. Garage Trail Sale

Each year in Australia 250,000 people take part in The Garage Sale Trail which is billed as the “Festival of Pre-loved Stuff’. Over 1.5 million used items exchange hands and are saved from landfill from vintage clothes to collectables and furniture. People have both real and virtual garage sales to display their items for sale.

PayPal has teamed up with the Garage Sale Trail and allows sellers to generate touch-free, Covid Safe QR codes to take payments. The trial happens in October and people wanting to register to be part of the trail need to sign up before September 2022.  Over 100 local councils in Australia help to organize the trails and make the whole experience a safe and enjoyable one. 

Essentially, buyers and sellers will be able to transact with each other without having to use cash and all transactions can go through their respective PayPal accounts. While we might be used to being able to pay in store with our phones, it is not yet standard practice to do so for pre-loved goods in a face-to-face environment.

2. Shopping Apps

If you prefer your fashion and household items new and direct from the designer a huge number of the major brands and stores have teamed up with PayPal. This means that when you are using their app on your mobile device you don’t need to enter your card details to do so. Shopping apps include Asos to Urban Outfitters and Kitchen Style to Pets Palace. 

3. Online Gaming and Entertainment

There is now a proliferation of fabulous online gaming and gambling opportunities to download, play and pass the time. Our phones have become so much more than simply devices for phoning and texting. Social media apps are among the most used that we have installed on our phones as well as many gaming apps.

Gaming was previously restricted to console and desktop PC use because of the need to be able to store large amounts of data. However, cloud-based gaming means that we no longer need to download an entire game to be able to play. It is the same with the betting apps in Australia, UK, India and US which allow you to have an online bookie in your hand. Check out where you can pay securely using PayPal.

4. A little bit of background

While PayPal is now a name that is synonymous with secure financial transactions. Back in the day when eCommerce was something only being talked about by early adopters, the majority of consumers were asking the question, ‘how do I know this transaction will be safe?’. There was considerable concern regarding internet security and many people did not feel that any form of online transaction was safe.

PayPal was set up as a secure middleman between the buyer and seller creating a secure platform where payments could take place between users with registered accounts. There was no longer any need for details to be shared.

Initially, PayPal was very much associated with eBay and transactions taking place between individuals who did not have access to expensive ‘merchant services’ that traditional banking platforms offered. At the same time, the traditional banking services were improving their security and also offering secure transactions through schemes such as Verified by Visa. 

5. Recent innovations

PayPal has other new features which it has introduced to compete with providers who have come to the payment market like Klarna, prepaid cards, Apple and Google Pay. PayPal offers customers several ‘buy now pay later options’ including, pay in three instalments and PayPal credit.