eBay is well aware of the need for the company to get its brand out there a little bit more. One of the web’s most successful websites has fallen into a situation where eBay is more of an afterthought than a place that web browsers need to visit. 

An ad campaign that ran over the summer was produced in order to get the site’s profile back up, but their newest announcement might do a better job of that task. eBay is expected to announce a new service called Paypal Access as well as better Facebook integration.

Paypal Access is actually expected to behave quite a bit the same way that Facebook does with other websites, in that it will become a sort of universal login for commercial sites. This means that these sites will allow their users to login and register using the Paypal Access login rather than having to register for a brand new account. 

The hope of course, as it is with sites that allow the Facebook login, is that more people will use their site because they are saving some time by not having to fill out a complete form. Because the sites will be linking back to Paypal accounts, the retailers know that there is money available and will be more ready to accept the new feature.

As far as what the deeper partnership with Facebook may be, there aren’t a whole lot of details. eBay’s Paypal system already allows Facebook users to purchase that site’s credits using Paypal, but the full announcement as to what tweaks might be made won’t be public until X.commerce really gets rolling later today. 

The formal announcement may come today or later in the week. The San Francisco based conference will run until October 14th.

An X.commerce representative said that the Paypal Access features will help both retailers and shoppers both, but there are some real drawbacks for online stores. The biggest drawback is that the buyer’s data will all be stored with Paypal rather than the retailer. This means that companies will be reliant on Paypal staying on the up and up. That might be a small price to pay in order to draw in thousands of new customers.