"PayPal is not a Mobile Wallet Company"

With the caveat that "what a thing is" is different from "what a thing does," and with the further caveat that marketers and public relations personnel have the job of trying to shape and define companies and their products, it is perhaps noteworthy that a PayPal "spinmeister" argues that PayPal is "not a mobile wallet or mobile payments company."

To be sure, that is completely true in the "what a thing is" sense. PayPal has been in the payments space for a long time. It can be used in a "mobile wallet or mobile payments" application. 

In part, any PayPal insistence that it is "not just" a mobile payment or mobile wallet" company is correct. But the language might arguably also be called an attempt by PayPal to separate itself from many other firms that provide some of the same functions as PayPal.

That tactic is an old one. Whether true or not, marketers often try to use language to position products and companies as "more comprehensive" or somehow "qualitatively different" than those of competitors. 

But there might be something else at work, as well. PayPal's real objective is to extend its operations and revenue from the online space to the "real world" retail space. 

"We are on the brink of another game changing revolution that will change shopping more in the next few years than the Internet changed retail because it will affect all our purchases," says Anuj Nayar, PayPal  senior director, global communications. 

"At PayPal we have had a digital wallet for 14 years, we are just updating it to let our customers shop wherever they want, not just online."

So the possible importance here is a shift of much market thinking from "payments" or "mobile" to "commerce."