San Jose, Calif. — PayPal announced its new peer-to-peer payment application that enables Android smartphone users to pay each other using Near Field Communication (NFC), Gigaom reported today, marking the latest move in the company’s adoption of mobile.
Using technology from Bump Technologies, users will be able to request or send money by tapping their phones against another phone that has the same app. Bump is best known as the creator of the Bump app for exchanging contact or information between mobile owners, also just by tapping them together. For exchanging money with someone who doesn’t have the app , the PayPal transaction can be completed by entering a PIN number.
“We’re seeing staggering growth in PayPal mobile payments, showing a real consumer desire for the way they shop and pay to catch up with the way we live,” Laura Chambers, senior director at PayPal Mobile, wrote on the company’s blog. “But at PayPal, we’ve said all along that consumer behavior won’t change unless we’re able to offer an experience that’s truly better than what’s available today. We’ve been looking at NFC technology for a while and we saw a tremendous opportunity to combine the best of NFC and the best of PayPal.”
PayPal’s new mobile payment service will only be available to the Samsung Nexus S from Sprint and T-Mobile, but will expand to other NFC-enabled Android phones in the future.
The company characteristed the app as “another step towards realizing the PayPal vision of creating an entirely new way for people to shop and pay — anytime, anywhere and on any device.”
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/649a8lf (Gigaom)
http://tinyurl.com/6ldb2lv (PayPal Blog)
