PayPal today announced a new deal with Skype that will allow users in 22 countries worldwide to send money to other Skype users through an updated version of the Skype mobile app.
This extends PayPal’s potential reach by a sizable amount – the Skype app has been downloaded over a billion times to date, and has approximately 300 million monthly active users, according to Skype parent company Microsoft, as of last year.
In order to initiate a money transfer on Skype, users will need to tap Find or swipe right to open the listed add-ins. Amongst the add-ins, tap on Send Money and select the country you live in, followed by the country of the contact you want to send money to. Then, enter the amount and hit Next upon which you’ll be asked to sign into your PayPal account and link it with the Microsoft one. After this is completed, tap Send to complete your transfer, and return to the chat screen to check the transfer status.
TechCrunch emphasizes that the feature is designed for sending money between friends and family – not payments for goods or services from a business. And like PayPal’s peer-to-peer payments on other platforms, the rates are the same.
This is not the first time Skype has tried out peer-to-peer payments in collaboration with PayPal. Back in 2007, Skype introduced a feature on desktop that allowed its users to send each other money via PayPal, as part of eBay’s larger plan to integrate its various services.
The supported markets includes: the U.S., the U.K., Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.
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PayPal says the ability to send money will begin to roll out today to Skype users on iOS and Android, in the U.S. and elsewhere.