PayPal Launches Facebook App for P2P

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PayPal recently announced a "Send Money" app on Facebook.It allows a sender to send money to another PayPal user and to give it a social twist, PayPal has added the ability to send an e-card with the payment.


According to this article, "While there are several ways to pay with PayPal via Facebook (Payvment comes to mind), this is the first app to enable peer-to-peer payments via Facebook and PayPal. And because it's a peer-to-peer transaction, there is no transaction fee, though PayPal's regular limits and international fees still apply.



"Sending money, person to person, is free," PayPal Senior Product Marketing Manager JB Coutinho said. "If it's funded by a PayPal balance or linked to a bank account, it's free."

Despite some media reports, it is not a new partnership between Facebook and PayPal. It is simply PayPal creating an App on the Facebook platform. The interface is quite simple and the fact that its free, just like most P2P transactions, does add to the appeal. e-Cards is a nice feature as well. PayPal pointed out that more than 500M e-cards get sent out every year and gifting is a huge market.

I don't see this app taking off in a big way in the short term and this is no reflection on PayPal. I think there is a question mark in general about transactions happening on Facebook but you got to appreciate the fact that PayPal has been very aggressive and smart about making its platform available at every place where a payment transaction is conceivable and this is another good step in that direction.