PayPal aims to bring standards into the dirty world of carrier payments

Carrier payments — the ability to make mobile purchases that get charged directly to your cellular bill — are convenient for consumers, but for many merchants they can be a raw deal thanks to the big revenue bite carriers often take from purchases.

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Ebay aims to change that paradigm and make carrier payments a viable option for many more merchants. Today eBay CEO John Donahoe announced the PayPal Carrier Payment Network at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which will help instill standards for carrier payments across different mobile operators.

PayPal mobile vice president David Marcus explained what the network aims to do on the company’s blog:

The initiative will require that carriers revise standards to help optimize user experience, increase flexibility of carrier payments as a payment method, and increase payout rates for merchants, allowing carrier payments to address the entire digital goods industry, which is expected to grow to $220 billion by 2014 according to Juniper Research.

The Carrier Payment Network is part of the multi-pronged approach PayPal and its parent company eBay are taking with mobile payments. In an interview with VentureBeat at the Mobile World Congress, Marcus also reiterated PayPal’s plans to roll out mobile payments to all Home Depot stores (over 2,000 locations) within the next few months, following a trial run in a few select stores.

Be it carrier payments, or simply picking up that much-needed chainsaw at Home Depot, eBay and PayPal want to be in on the mobile payments action. The companies today also announced two new mobile payment partnerships with Yotel, a company that offers temporary sleep pods for travelers, and Entradas, Spain’s top ticketing company.

Image via Liz Wize/Flickr

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