PayPal partners with Skype to enable peer-to-peer payments in 22 countries

Online payments company PayPal has announced a partnership with Microsoft-owned Skype to enable peer-to-peer transactions via the platform. With the updated Skype mobile app, Skype users in around 22 countries will be able to send money to other Skype users. India is currently not in that list. The feature only allows you to send money to friends and family and is not yet meant for business payments.

PayPal logo. AP

PayPal can leverage the Skype mobile app, which boasts of around 300 mn active users, to increase its reach. You will need the latest version of Skype’s mobile app. While conversing with friends or family, you can go to ‘Find’ on the top bar and select the ‘Send Money’ feature, type in the amount followed by confirming the payment and then sending it.

In terms of charges levied, the rates are similar to PayPal’s peer-to-peer payments. If you are using PayPal balance or debit card in the US, there are no charges. For credit cards, the fee charged is 3.4 percent of the transaction amount in addition to a fee of $0.30.

The feature will roll out today to Skype users on iOS and Android.

The entire list of countries which will be supporting this feature on the updated version of the Skype mobile app is thus: the US, the UK, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands,
Portugal, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

Recently, PayPal announced that it would be partnering with Apple to make its payment system available on iOS for transactions made on the App Store, iTunes Store and Apple Music.

The roll-out initially began with Canada and Mexico and eventually went live to the rest of the countries including Spain, Italy, Israel, France, the UK, Australia, and Germany. Once the feature is activated, all in-app purchases and subscriptions can be paid through PayPal with your Apple account, no matter what device you’re using . It will be added as a direct payment option on iOS, which was not available previously.