Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

So he does anticipate widespread NFC adoption, see?

In other parts of that call, Donahoe talked about its Home Depot deployment and the likely next steps. But he started with an unusual marketshare claim, arguing that in-store PayPal payments—which Donahoe calls off-line payments—are an attractive financial move, because an awful lot of people buy things in stores.

“We continue to be very excited about the off-line opportunity for PayPal. It expands PayPal’s served market from a $500 million market to a $10 trillion market. And if we just capture 2 percent of the off-line retail, it’s another PayPal,” he told financial analysts. Did he just say that it’s a great move, because if eBay only captures one out of our every 50 purchases in every store, it will make a fortune? Heck, why stop at 2 percent and be another PayPal? He should have said 5 percent, and then eBay could be larger than Wal-Mart.

Isn’t this like the argument to venture capitalists that “our startup’s products will appeal to men and women everywhere. And if only 1 percent of the relevant customers buys it, we’ll make you billions?”

Back to Home Depot. Donahoe confirmed that very few actual Home Depot customers have been using the PayPal service, but that will likely change this summer when, he said, active marketing to consumers will start.

“Frankly, the only people using it thus far are eBay and Home Depot employees and others that have happened to have seen it. We’re now working with Home Depot to start a phase of marketing to consumers, which will come in the May –June timeframe, and you’ll see that,” he said. “Now you’ll probably see some signage in the Home Depot stores. They will be doing some mailing to their customers. We’ll be doing mailings to ours. And that’s when we’ll really begin to focus on trying to get some consumer engagement around it. And so a good part of the summer will be working on that phase of things. Now in the interim, we’ve continued to have a pipeline. Don Kingsborough and the team have been working hard signing up other retailers. We have several under contract, and during the second half of the year, we’ll be bringing those live to site. But again, with very much of a test-and-learn mindset, really, we’re trying to get some retailers in different segments to learn.”

At least he’s learned his lesson about citing specific numbers of retailers that will be using PayPal in-store.