The new ‘Certified Developer and Partner Program’ is designed to recruit developers and solution providers to help make e-commerce more accessible to those outside the retail sector, such as not-for-profit, education and government areas.

According to PayPal, even though 81 per cent of Australian NFPs have a website, only 27 per cent sell goods and services through it and only 22 per cent use the internet for fundraising, despite the fact that individuals and businesses are currently donating $11 billion per year of money, goods and services to such organisations.

Global Head of PayPal Alliances and Vertical Markets Glenn Lim said “We identified a gap in the market and designed this program to help more organisations tap into the internet’s revenue building capacity, while also helping to build new markets for PayPal.

“From enabling charities to raise funds online, to helping local school collect fees more efficiently and securely – our aim is to bring the benefits of e-commerce to the wider community.”

PayPal has also partnered with software company, Blackbaud, to introduce BlackBaudNow – a new low cost service that will enable smaller NFPs to create, by using simple templates, an effective website so that they can increase their supporter bases and accept donations and payments online using in-built PayPal payments processing.