Karen Webster, in her weekly piece for PYMENTS.com, interviews PayPal’s GM of Retail, Brad Brodigan. She then follows this with some cogent analysis. The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s a few nuggets:

What merchants see in the mobile opportunity in-store is the opportunity to remove friction, and not introduce it, into the shopping experiences of their customers.

And, today, in-store, that isn’t the act of paying for something.

What does introduce friction is a consumer trying to keep track of offers, coupons, sales, shopping lists, preferences, reviews, recommendations, pricing, inventory availability, having to mill around the store looking for stuff, and then having to schlepp to a specific place in a store and stand in line to pay for something. Not only does all of this introduce friction for the consumer, it introduces friction for the merchant, too – not to mention lost sales opportunities.

Making the payment process painless is only half the solution. Integrating with the world outside the iOS ecosystem is the other half. Reducing the friction between Apple Pay and the world of loyalty programs, coupons, shopping lists, and preferences will ultimately steer and speed consumer adoption of Apple Pay.

PayPal is starting to look a lot more like a company that’s placing its bets on leveraging the synergies between its merchant services group and its consumer payments capabilities and a lot less like a company that is trying to double down on being a “payments” company.

That suggests that PayPal’s ambition isn’t to compete as a payments app with Apple Pay (or Samsung Pay) at the point of sale for payment – but to perhaps take a page out of the Alipay play book and become a commerce and financial services brand that creates a trusted and reinforcing circle of services around businesses and consumers.

The sense here is that PayPal is conceding the payments war, trying to diversify outside that area to remain relevant.