PayPal Galactic: Your favorite way to pay. In space.

Forget international commerce. PayPal is reaching for the stars (pun intended).

The online currency provider announced Thursday that it was launching PayPal Galactic, an initiative geared at making "universal space payments a reality." The venture is a partnership between PayPal, the Space Tourism Society, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute.

“As space tourism programs are opening space travel to ‘the rest of us’ this drives questions about the commercialization of space,” PayPal president David Marcus said in the press announcement on the SETI website. “We are launching PayPal Galactic to increase public awareness of the important questions that need to be addressed.” 

PayPal formally announced the project at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., with a press conference that featured the leaders of the three partner organizations, as well as a cameo from former astronaut Buzz Aldrin. 

The launch, inevitably, raises a lot of silly questions: How is buying something in space any different than buying something online with a credit card? Do travelers checks not work in space? Are there gift shops on Mars?

Snicker all you want, but PayPal Galactic’s partners argue that the issue of how to conduct financial transactions beyond Earth is one that needs to be tackled sooner rather than later, as various privatized space ventures start to ramp up. A few examples: Virgin Galactic is taking bookings for space flights online, and a number of celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber, have reserved their seats. If all goes as planned, the company will launch its first commercial space flight by Christmas. Orbital Technologies, a Russian company, hopes to open the first space hotel by 2016.

But space thus far is a completely unregulated commercial sphere. That means certain practical matters will have to be addressed, including what the standard currency will look like and how earth-bound banks will handle out-of-earth transactions. It will also involve working with government authorities to combat financial fraud and oversee customer service (what time zone does space follow, anyway?). And the practical concerns go far beyond those of electronic payments or international purchases.

"None of the structural pieces for payments [of any kind] are in place in an extraterrestrial space, says Anuj Nayer, senior initiatives director for PayPal, in a phone interview. "We're starting completely from scratch. GPS systems won't work there, and there's no government sovereignty in space. At this point, we're not even answering the big questions. We're just trying to figure out what they are. " 

PayPal thinks that the commercial space of, well, space, could grow very quickly. "The time is right," Mr. Marcus said during the press conference. "Futurists expect space travel to mimic what happened with air travel." In the 1930s, he points out, air travel was pricey: a one-way ticket could cost the present-day equivalent of several thousand dollars. But today, a round-trip flight from New York to California costs as little as $300.

Likewise, the space vacations lurking just around the earth’s planetary bend are prohibitively expensive. A seat on a Virgin Galactic flight costs $250,000. A flight on the Lynx Apollo, a competing carrier, costs $95,000. But those costs could come down. In a May interview with the tech news website Engadget, Virgin CEO Richard Branson said the key to more affordable space travel would be a larger number of more energy-efficient spacecrafts. “In the years to come, we will get the price down, and our aim is to, you know, by the time you get to an age where you want to go to space, you'll be able to afford it, and by the time your children want to go to space, they'll be able to afford it. So, I don't want to forecast prices and things; we're going to try to make it as affordable to as many people as possible,” he said.

Plus, the price tag has already dropped considerably. In 2001, billionaire Dennis Tito became the world's first "space tourist," paying his way onto a Russian spacecraft for $20 million. Compared to that, Justin Bieber is getting a bargain. 

And PayPal Galactic wants to make sure that the rest of us can afford that extraterrestrial vacation, we'll be able to buy a souvenir at the space station gift shop to bring back to earth without much trouble. "We don't have all the answers right now, but it's clear we won't be using cash when we're in space," Marcus said.