PayPal Plans to Bring Shopping Experience to Augmented Reality Smart Glasses

PayPal has been on an expansion marathon lately, launching its payment service in India and adding support for the online payment service in Samsung Pay and Facebook Messenger, allowing users to send and receive money on the app. After solidifying its position as a premier global online payments service and making inroads into third-party apps and services, the company has now set its sights on another domain i.e. smart glasses.

PayPal has recently extended the patent rights for a technology which could allow users wearing AR smart glasses to do shopping and also make payments for goods by creating a virtual view of the experience. Titled ‘Augmented Reality View of Product Inscriptions’, the application filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) describes a technology which creates an augmented reality view of an object, alongside other relevant product details, associated promotional material, shopping instructions and payment information among others.

Aside from generating an augmented reality view of products, the technology will also give recommendations and direct users to an online shopping portal if they select one of the recommended items. The most obvious implementation of this technology would be in retail stores, where users wearing AR smart glasses will be able to view the complete product profile of an object in their view, complete with payment information and recommendations in tow.

“Individual and grouped listings may include details such as a title of an item offered for sale, a description of the item, a price of the item, one or more pictures of the item, a geographic location of the seller or the item, payment and shipping options, and a return policy”, reads PayPal’s patent application.

Aside from the traditional shopping experience, PayPal’s technology will also help a host of other tasks like proxy bidding for an item on auction, creating a virtual store, etc. however, the company is yet to confirm or give any official information about its futuristic technology.