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PayPal to show off digital wallet features at SXSW

PayPal is taking advantage of SXSW Interactive to roll out some new features on its mobile wallet, features it has been talking about since introducing its offline strategy last year. SXSW Interactive is the annual conference and festival hosted in Austin, Texas focusing on new technology. This year's festival runs from March 9-13. 

On a blog post on the company's website, Sam Shrauger, PayPal's VP for global product and experience, said he will demo changes to PayPal's digital wallet that will mark "the first time in our 13-year history that we’ve completely redesigned and re-architected the PayPal wallet to make money work better in today’s rapidly evolving, multi-channel shopping environment."

According to Shrauger, he'll demo "an intelligent wallet that will do for digital money what Internet mash-ups did for digital information: free it, so you can connect it, filter it, personalize it, share it and make it work the way that you want it to."

Among the new features in PayPal's digital wallet, the ability for a consumer to buy an item in a store and then decide later, during a 5–7 day grace period, how to fund the transaction. What's more, the consumer can fund the purchase from any payment source in the PayPal wallet, including — and this is particularly interesting — any account that provides "value," meaning even loyalty points and airline miles can be made to work in the wallet.

"Let’s say I want to combine the value of 10,000 airline miles with a $100 gift card to pay for the new TV I just bought," said Shraugher. "There’s no way I can do that right now — but the PayPal wallet will."

Additionally, the wallet will automatically find deals and coupons, compare prices and let consumers set rules to apply certain types of purchases to various accounts. Consumers can even decide after purchasing something to pay for it in installments.

Many of the features are similar to what PayPal has been showing off for some time in its New York City pop-up store and its new San Jose showcase store. The goal for PayPal is to give users a more intelligent, cloud-based digital wallet that they can use in ways that make sense depending upon their needs.

"PayPal is not about replacing a card swipe with a phone tap at point of sale," Shraugher said. "We are reimagining money to free it in its digital form so that it can work better for everyone."

Shrauger said that new features for the digital wallet will begin rolling out in late May.

For more stories like this visit the Mobile/Virtual Wallet research center.