PayPal, the online payment system owned by eBay, is slowly shifting into a universal way to pay. The payment company announced last week that it is teaming up with Home Depot to test PayPal acceptance at five physical store locations.

Users can pay using one of two methods at the point-of-sale. First, they could enter the phone number associated with their PayPal account along with a special identification number. Second, they could swipe a card that is already tied to their account. The transaction would then conducted through PayPal.

Home Depot was mum on how long the test would run or how many PayPal employees were involved in the pilot program.

"PayPal has made it clear it wants to be a player in bricks-and-mortar stores," George Peabody, director of the emerging technology advisory service at consulting firm Mercator Advisory Group, told Internet Retailer. "And they made it clear they want to play with the largest retailers."

This shift is not coming out of the blue. PayPal originally announced its intentions to gap the physical and digital worlds in a blog post last fall.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Monday, January 9th, 2012 at 9:52 am .