PayPal Inc. hopes that fine-tuning a debit service will encourage people to use its payment services for online shopping.
The debit service, Virtual Debit Card, was tested last year. It featured one-time account numbers that allowed PayPal users to make purchases online at merchants that do not accept PayPal.
The updated version, PayPal Plug-in, keeps better track of these one-time-use numbers, which PayPal says will be helpful to shoppers who want a refund or have to reverse a transaction.
PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc., is using Orbiscom Inc. software that generates the single-use MasterCard Inc. card numbers. To merchants the payments looks like standard MasterCard transactions, but PayPal users see them listed online on their accounts' transaction history. (The payments are processed by First Data Corp.)
The updated version, announced Monday, also keeps a list of customers' one-time account numbers for future reference.
PayPal said this is a small but significant improvement, because if someone had to track a payment made with Virtual Debit Card they would need the account number. Since that number was used only once, people typically did not write it down, and that made returns difficult, PayPal said.
The update also lets people take and store screenshots of online receipts. These screenshots capture all the coding of a Web page and can help customers keep records of any site they visit. They can use this feature even if they make purchases with other payment methods.
"We're giving users the ability to really start consolidating their activity in one place," said Chris George, PayPal's senior director of financial products. "A lot of people are talking about using Plug-in as a budgeting tool."
In most cases those numbers, called Secure Cards, can be used for only one transaction, though users can set them up to be charged repeatedly by the same merchant to pay recurring bills — for wireless road toll payments system such as EZPass, for example. The account numbers will remain active for up to two years, and users can update the expiration date to keep the accounts active even longer.
Mr. George would not say how many people have tested the payment product, though he said more updates are in the works.
For example, PayPal is working on a way to link specific transactions on its account history page to specific screenshots. It is also developing a way to link the screenshots back to the pages where they were taken, so users who used them for budgeting could go back to complete a transaction.
Mr. George would not say when these new features will be available, but he is aiming for 2008.
Edward Woods, a senior analyst for the Boston market research firm Celent LLC, said the revised product should increase use of PayPal's payment system.
"As you add more meaningful usability features, you're going to draw utilization of the product, and these are clearly value-added capabilities for the users," he said.
The screenshot tool is the most appealing element of the Plug-in software, Mr. Woods said. "That is an actual function that people do," he said. "They'll do a screenshot or a screen print, so that's meaningful."
The tool could make PayPal customers more likely to consider its service for specific purchases so they can review those transactions when they review the screenshots, he said. "It's good for PayPal because to be able to see it, you've got to come back to your account."
PayPal has an undisclosed limit on the number of screenshots a user can store in a 30-day period, and this is wise, Mr. Woods said. The tool is useful for storing any online material and could invite abuse, he said.
