Mikey Campbell
Ubiquitous online payments service PayPal on Thursday released an updated version of its eponymous iOS with Siri integration, allowing users to ask Apple's assistant to send and request money.
As noted on PayPal's official blog, the new PayPal app with Siri integration lets iPhone and iPad owners send and request money using nothing but their voice.
The company offered a number of example command strings that invoke the new feature, including, "Hey Siri, send Bill $50 using PayPal," "Use PayPal to send $125 to Jenny for groceries," and "Request $20 from Dad with PayPal." Whether the feature is compatible with Siri's new neural network-powered capabilities, like contextual replies and enhanced comprehension of long-tail queries, is unclear.
With PayPal account access just a voice prompt away, users will be able to easily split restaurant tabs, pay back friends, share bills and more, the company says.
At launch, Siri voice integration is rolling out in multiple languages serving 30 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium (French and Dutch), Brazil, Canada (English and French), China, Denmark, Finland (Finnish), France, Germany, Hong Kong (Cantonese), India, Israel (Hebrew), Italy, Japan, Malaysia (Malay), Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia (Arabic), Singapore (English), Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (French, German, and Italian), Thailand, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates (Arabic) and the United States.
PayPal's Siri integration comes nearly two months after Apple officially opened Siri APIs to third-party developers. Interestingly, PayPal subsidiary Venmo was first to receive Siri at launch.
PayPal can be downloaded for free from the iOS App Store.
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6 Comments
Does the user pay any fee for this service?
I rarely use PayPal and am interested in how they monetize their offering.
You can send money to friends and family for no fee. Only when its for goods or services (or international) are there fees.
Use web based ApplePay wherever you can.
It is awesome.
I love PayPal -- but have never found a use for it outside of EBay. I have only found a few stores who will accept it, but I've never figured out how to get their machine to accept it and the cashiers had no idea either - they had never seen anybody use it.
So, say you send money to somebody: it's sitting in their PayPal account. Unless they have a bank account linked to the PayPal account (which I think is a VERY bad idea) or use EBay, what good is it?