eBay says that its PayPal division expects to hit $4.7 billion in total payment volume (TPV) of digital goods in 2011.
The projection, announced at eBay’s X.commerce Innovate developers conference, would be a significant increase in transactions for digital goods — up 28% from 2010, when digital goods accounted for a TPV of $3.4 billion.
PayPal defines digital goods as the “direct or indirect payment of any digital asset.” This includes virtual goods, digital music, news, media, online video and virtual currencies like Facebook Credits.
“The big message is our belief that there’s a lot of opportunity in digital goods,” PayPal’s Senior Director of Emerging Opportunities Carey Kolaja told Mashable.
The company also announced that it is teaming up with Microsoft to bring in-console payments to the Xbox 360 before the end of the year. Users can already utilize their PayPal accounts on the Xbox Live website, but starting this holiday season, users can log in to their PayPal accounts on the Xbox 360 and pay for games and other digital content with PayPal. Kolaja says more than 70% of gamers already have PayPal.
Although PayPal didn’t get into the specifics of which digital goods are most popular among users, the company did reveal that gaming, digital music, publishing and social media are some of its major focuses. “Music has been a heavy, heavy focus for us,” Kolaja said.
PayPal is working with publishers, such as The Wall Street Journal, on figuring out how best to monetize their content on the web. Virtual good transactions have also become more popular, thanks to the rise of social gaming. PayPal is moving aggressively to be the payment provider for all of these digital transactions. The reason is simple: PayPal expects $150 billion of digital goods will be distributed in the next few years.
The digital payments giant is also offering developers additional support for their HTML5 apps. PayPal announced a new set of HTML5 APIs that will allow developers to integrate in-app payments with their HTML5 apps. Previously, developers had to use Java to integrate PayPal’s APIs to successfully accomplish this sort of integration.
Are you surprised by the amount of digital goods PayPal is processing? How do you typically pay for virtual goods? Let us know in the comments.
More About: ebay, microsoft, paypal, xbox, Xbox 360
For more Dev & Design coverage:
- Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter
- Become a Fan on Facebook
- Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel
- Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
