Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Ironically, Toys “R” Us accepts Visa, MasterCard, Amex and Discover, plus BillMeLater and PayPal, but Toys “R” Us’ site stresses that “third-part forms of payment [which includes PayPal] cannot be used for all purchases.” Unlike the way that eBay is treating Visa customers, at least Toys “R” Us accepts PayPal for some transactions.

Back to the app. It’s not clear how the app would work—as a practical matter—in the field. The easiest route would be for the app to have the product shipped to the customer’s home or office address. But that ignores strong psychological realities. The consumer is standing in a store and is holding the desired product. In this case, a toy. They’re touching the product. That consumer could take it home in moments by walking over to the POS. Saying that it will be delivered within a week doesn’t sound very compelling, compared with instant gratification. It’s not logical; it’s emotional. And few places are emotions more in play with a product purchase than with holiday toys.

The better way to complete that purchase is to truly complete the transaction and to issue a digital receipt, enabling the customer to walk out of the store with the item. But that requires the store to have extensive loss-prevention mechanisms in place, which few have. The ability for the app to be used anywhere sharply decreases the percentage of places where immediate pickup will be an option.

eBay officially embraces both approaches, according to a document eBay sent to reporters. “Now you can find the best prices and purchase directly from within the app for home delivery or local in-store pickup from select stores,” it said.

As for the platforms, this gets interesting. PayPal has been pushing itself as entirely platform-agnostic, with the eBay-owned PayPal Wallet supporting not only all of the smartphone platforms (including iPhone, Android and BlackBerry) but many non-smartphone platforms, as well, although it admits that much of its functionality won’t work beyond smartphones. eBay-owned RedLaser, though, is a smartphone-only app and it even excludes BlackBerry (these days, who doesn’t?).

This new capability—the one that Toys “R” Us is trialing—is seemingly only available with phones using the free RedLaser 3.0. But that 3.0 version seems to have also excluded Android, with eBay saying that 3.0 is “available for free on iPhone, iPod Touch or in the iTunes App store.”

This is a very impressive move by eBay, and it is an important advancement in mobile payments. If only eBay hadn’t shot itself in the SIM card with its PayPal-only policy, it would have been a truly beautiful thing.