PayPal has introduced a new person-to-person payment feature designed to help customers request money from friends and family through their very own personalized URL.
PayPal is rolling out the service initially across 18 countries - the US, Germany, UK, Australia, Canada, Russia, Turkey, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria.
Rolled out as a free service, users simply sign up for the personalized URL - PayPal.Me/name – that provides a link for recipients to click and send cash across any device.
PayPal’s senior director of global product, Meron Colbeci, said PayPal.Me Is an instant, safe, unique link that works on any device no matter where you’re talking to people – in a text, email, instant messenger, social media post, blog, or on the web.
The PayPal Money Habits study of 4000 consumers in the US, Canada, Germany and Australia estimates that adults worldwide are owed more than $51 billion in IOUs from friends and family.
Across the study group respondents find it awkward to ask their friends or family to pay them back. "These billions of dollars go unclaimed simply because people hate spending the time to chase down debts, and have those awkward face-to-face conversations," said Colbeci.
He claimed that PayPal.Me will change everything about getting paid back. That may yet need to be proven.
Earlier in the US, a company called Square launched what may be the predecessor to this service. Called $Cashtags uses unique identifiers, such as $Biteme, to link to payment pages or can be used with the Square Cash app to instantly exchange cash with contacts.
Businesses will be charged a 1.5% fee for the service. Individuals using the service won’t get charged. In the US non-profits like Wikipedia ($Wikipedia) and Khan Academy (@KhanAcademy) are using $Cashtags for fundraising.
Zennon Kapron, co-founder and director at Kapronasia, a Shanghai-based consultancy says new solutions like PayPal.Me and Square's $Cashtags certainly make it easier for people and business to identify each other and initiate payments.
“However, they still don't solve the root problem which is that, as PayPal and Square payments aren't accepted everywhere, you at some point need to get to cash. This is where the process of sending or receiving a P2P payment in western markets falls down and becomes much more onerous and slow,” he explained.
Signing up and verifying bank accounts takes time, and ACH transfers take several business days. Contrast these solutions with Alipay where you can sign-up and verify your account immediately and get nearly realtime cash payments.”