The OpenID Foundation has a new, very important member: PayPalI say very important because unlike many other web services, when it comes to online identification, PayPal simply must get it right This doesn’t mean you’ll be able to log into your PayPal account with your OpenID account, but it means that OpenID might one day get “upgraded” to the point where it can be used for high security/retail transactions.

The fact that PayPal is joining the OpenID foundation as a sustaining corporate member of the Board (more precisely, they donate $50,000 to the foundation each year) means they’ve taken a good, long look at OpenID and they consider it a viable option for unique online identification.

PayPal selected Andrew Nash, senior Director of Information Risk Management, as their representativeHe will join the current board of seven community elected board members, and five other sustaining corporate members: Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo.

You can find the full list of Board’s members on the OpenID Foundation site ---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:The Daily Poll: How Often Do You Use OpenID to Login?Another Victory For OpenID: Yahoo Announces SupportBlogger’s OpenID Support Now OfficialCallVerifiD Introduces A New Layer of SecurityWikispaces Adds OpenID SuportBlogger Beta Gets OpenID SupportOpenID Management Comes to Flock .