This morning, the OpenID Foundation announced that PayPal has joined the OpenID Foundation Board, becoming the first financial institution to join the Foundation as a sustaining member. Andrew Nash, Sr. Director of Information Risk Management, has been named as the PayPal representative on the Board. PayPal's commitment to the cause is another vote of confidence for OpenID, especially considering PayPal's role dealing with sensitive financial data.

With eBay - via PayPal - now actively engaging in the discussion, the collection of Web juggernauts at the OpenID table grows ever more impressive. Fellow sustaining members include Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo!.

Granted, this could be another opportunity for us to herald a tipping point for OpenID. But at a time when solutions like OpenID, sign-on services like Facebook Connect, and all-encompassing solutions like JanRain RPX continue to gain traction, we'll settle for noting that the concept of portable digital identities continues to gather momentum - and acceptance.