PayPal joins OpenID Foundation Board

PayPal has joined the OpenID Foundations board today as a sustaining corporate member, which makes it the first financial institution to join the foundation with that member status. Andrew Nash, Sr. Director of Information Risk Management was chosen by PayPal to join the current board as he has been a longstanding advocate for OpenID. The current five sustaining corporate members are Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo.

According to Mr. Nash on an OpenID blog post, PayPal decided to become a sustaining member for a few key reasons, including that the "open standards-based user-centric identity is clearly becoming an increasingly important part of the evolving web infrastructure" and that "PayPal has significant experience and expertise with security, trust, reputation and retail transactions that can be directly relevant as OpenID expands into new market and application areas."

PayPal joining the OpenID Foundation could be a great boost and an opportunity for OpenID, possibly even a tipping point. At the same time as the PayPal announcement, the OpenID Foundation also announced the election of its officers: Brian Kissel of JanRain, Chair; Scott Kveton of Vidoop, Vice-Chair; Mike Jones of Microsoft, Secretary; Raj Mata of Yahoo!, Treasurer, and David Recordon of Six Apart, Committee Liaison. An international liaison is yet to be named.

See also:

• OpenID - The future of logging in?, a heise online UK report

(crve)