Southwest Airlines Now Accepts PayPal

Travelers can now use PayPal, the eBay-owned electronic-payment system, to purchase Southwest tickets on the their PayPal accounts. Last month, Northwest Airlines made a similar announcement to accept PayPal, so I'm wondering whether this will soon become standard in the airline industry. PayPal, launched in 1998 to enable people to send and receive electronic payments without disclosing financial information the way a bank or other credit card provider might require, reportedly processed more than $38 billion in transactions last year. Google launched a payment system called Checkout in 2006. I can see it now: fare wars coupled with payment-processing battles.