London: The Financial Times today announced that it has introduced PayPal as a payment option to help facilitate subscription payments on FT.com. The PayPal solution is being rolled out as part of a new subscriptions sign-up portal designed to make it easier for readers to sign up to a variety of subscription options. The new portal is currently being tested on a proportion of visitors to FT.com.
PayPal offers a quick and straightforward experience for FT.com customers. Customers do not need to enter billing information when making a purchase as PayPal already holds that information.
“PayPal offers a very good experience for FT customers looking to subscribe to FT.com,” said Mary Beth Christie, Head of Product Management, FT.com. “We are always looking for ways to reduce barriers to subscription and PayPal couldn’t be more straightforward to use. It sits nicely alongside all of the major credit cards options we already have in place.”
Carl Scheible, PayPal’s UK Managing Director, said, “We’re delighted to be working with the Financial Times, the pioneer of paid-for online media content in Britain. PayPal is investing heavily in new payment solutions for media publishers, building on our existing experience in digital goods. The FT has shown that businesses and individuals are willing to pay for online content. Our aim is to help increase sales through an even faster customer experience.”
Offering another flexible and fast way to license its content, the Financial Times will also be utilising PayPal for its FT Press Cuttings tool launching on 28 October. Users, such as PR professionals, will be able to email a full text article at £1 per recipient (and US$ or Euro equivalents). Users will continue to be able to send links to others for free on an unlimited basis.
The Financial Times has seen strong growth in its digital subscriptions in 2010 and now has 189,022 paid-for digital subscribers. The FT iPad app has driven 10% of all digital subscriptions since launch and has seen 400,000 downloads to date.
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For further information please contact:
Tom Glover
Deputy Director of Communications
T: +44 (0) 20 7775 6840
E: tom.glover@ft.com
Drew Benvie / Ben Matthews/ Annie Woodhead
33 Digital
T: +44 (0) 20 7608 4660
E: ft.com@33-digital.com
About the Financial Times:
The Financial Times, one of the world’s leading business news organisations, is recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. Providing essential news, comment, data and analysis for the global business community, the newspaper, printed at 24 print sites across the globe, has a daily circulation of 390,228 (ABC figures September 2010), while FT.com has over 2.8 million registered users. The FT’s combined print and paid digital circulation is 579,249 (Deloitte assured, October 2010) and it has a combined print and online average daily readership of 1.9 million people worldwide (PwC assured, May 2010).