Facebook’s Messenger Now Allows People To Send Money To Friends Via PayPal

The chat messaging platform of the most widely used social media network in the planet now allows users in the United States to send cash to their friends using PayPal. Furthermore, PayPal’s first customer service bot is now also integrated into Facebook’s Messenger. This bot should help handle queries from customers as well as requests for online assistance.

It was about a year ago when Facebook and PayPal first revealed that they were joining forces in letting their American customers purchase items online from merchants with the use of Messenger chat bots and then pay for those items using the PayPal service. On top of that, users were also allowed to link their PayPal account with Messenger so that they can get alerts and receipts from the online shopping they did in Messenger. 

According to PayPal, more than two and a half million people have already linked their PayPal account with Messenger, and that number should continue to rise now that that peer to peer payments have been integrated directly to Messenger. PayPal currently handles peer to peer payment transactions worth over $80 billion, and there is no doubt that some of that volume should now fall on Messenger’s shoulders. By the way, the newly integrated PayPal peer to peer payment functionality on Messenger is separate from the payments feature that has been existing inside Messenger since 2015. Also, some may remember that back in April earlier this year, Facebook made the decision to start supporting group payments.

From here on, Facebook users now have the option of selecting PayPal as their funding source in sending cash through peer to peer payments. According to PayPal, customers can even choose its service as the default on Messenger.

So how do people get started in using the new option? They simply need to click the plus icon that is colored blue inside Messenger, and then choose the green colored Payments button in order to begin sending cash or requesting for funds. From here, they can also set PayPal as the source whenever they decide to pay a Messenger friend.

With this new integration, PayPal gets to continue to expand its reach. Few people may realize this, but the service has actually teamed up with another chat messaging platform before. As a matter of fact, PayPal is now made available by way of iMessage on iOS. The service can even be launched by requesting Siri’s help.