Gadling

Southwest Airlines has begun accepting electronic payments from PayPal as an alternative way of purchasing its low-fare tickets.

"We want to make purchasing a ticket on Southwest Airlines as easy and appealing as possible -- and PayPal is a great addition to our payment options," said Kevin Krone, Southwest Airlines Vice President Marketing, Sales, and Distribution, in an official statement.

This is especially nice for hardcore eBay salespeople and travelers who may not have a credit card, as PayPal allows you to link the service to your personal bank account. Otherwise, I don't see this being an extremely popular way to pay for plane tickets.

What is nice about it -- from Southwest's prospective -- is that money in a PayPal account seems much more "virtual" than cold, hard cash (or credit debt), and people might be more willing to spend it on leisurely things like travel. When I used to sell stuff on eBay and get payments through PayPal, I always treated my earnings stash as a "free money" account that I could use to buy other stupid things off eBay. If I had the option of either buying another vintage coffee cup off eBay, or a Southwest Airlines trip to Seattle, I'd be much more interested in the latter.

Wouldn't you?

Filed under: Airlines