I received an email today from PayPal informing merchants about an impending update to the look and feel of the PayPal website:

As one of our valued PayPal merchants, we would like you to know in advance that PayPal will soon be adopting a brand new look.

We thought it will be useful for you to know about this sooner, especially if you have a website, so you can prepare to use the new PayPal logos and buttons.

What to do

If your site features hosted buttons and images with PayPal logos, you don’t need to take any action. These will update automatically.

If you host buttons and images with PayPal logos, we recommend that you replace the current images on your site with the new ones. In a few weeks when the new images are available, we’ll send you instructions on how to download them from our website.

Why it’s important

We’ll be educating all PayPal customers about the new look. By updating your images soon after the day of launch, you will let your customers know you are a current PayPal merchant and it will help them feel safer making online purchases.

PayPal is such a cornerstone of modern online trading, any alterations to the design of their site will be interesting. Will they be adopting more standards based design? Integrating some more AJAX and front-end functionality? We’ll have to wait and see - should be interesting.