eBay is set to unveil PayPal Access, a service for letting users use their PayPal accounts on other websites without the need to register an account or a credit card.

The service, soon to be unveiled at eBay’s X.Commerce developers conference in San Francisco, will remove the need for users to register an account at other retail websites, thus decreasing the steps needed to make a purchase and lowering the risk associated with online commerce. All this means the risk of your details being hacked and stolen are minimised.

To implement the product, PayPal has turned to Gigya and Janrain as partners. Gigya will be offering the PayPal Access API to its nearly 500 enterprise clients through its Social Login product, while Janrain will offer the API through its social checkin platform.

Identity is going to play a huge part of how users interact on the web outside of their core social networks, and PayPal Access is aiming to help bring that vision to life, shoppers in theory will only need to login in once in order to go through the checkout flow.

The product has a few big hurdles to overcome, though. Its biggest challenge will be convincing retailers that they should implement PayPal Access in addition (or instead of) a traditional user registration system. While PayPal Access reduces the friction towards a purchase, retailers won’t have as much access or control over those user accounts. It’s an issue many online retailers will have to ponder as PayPal gains steam as the web’s most prominent payment solution.

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