Northwest is offering 500 bonus miles for booking a roundtrip on their website and paying with Paypal by September 30 for travel through the end of the year. (Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

I do suppose that more payment methods are better, and this in essence gives customers the ability to pay via direct debit from a bank account in addition to a credit card, and they won’t need a Visa-branded debit card in order to do it. my hundh, though, is that the universe for this is rather small.

Paypal is a great way for small shops to begin accepting credit cards without much hassle, and to give customers confidence in paying by credit card when the vendor is a relatively unknown. But for larger institutions? I’m not really sure I follow the benefit to Northwest here. Presumably it’s not business-changing, but they view this as a big enough deal to promote it with bonus miles…