As smartphones slowly transform into digital wallets, the need for payment providers to have strong roles in both online and offline purchases is acute. And with an eye on this payment future, PayPal, for one, announced yesterday one of the ways it hopes to evolve its role in physical retail sales. 

Indeed, PayPal revealed in a blog post yesterday that it acquired Fig Card, a mobile payments startup that will help PayPal get a slice of brick-and-mortar pie. Fig Card works by letting merchants accept mobile payments in stores by connecting a USB device into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal. To make payment, consumers must also download Fig’s app on their smartphones. [You can watch a demo here.]

Peter Chu, senior director of PayPal Mobile, blogs:

“We loved their approach to point-of-sale, particularly because it was driven by the same vision that we have at PayPal – in the future, transactions can be as smart as a computer and not as dumb as paper. We won’t need our physical wallets. We’ll be able to pay any way we want, from any device, anywhere in the world with both flexibility and privacy.”

With the acquisition, come two talent additions to PayPal’s mobile team: Entrepreneur technology vets Max Metral and Hasty Granbery, who are also the co-founders of Fig Card.

In the middle of a disruptive payments phase, forming alliances is key to staying on and/or near the top of the market, and certainly, PayPal’s open API doesn’t hurt its innovation trajectory either. Well played, PayPal.