​The Skype iOS App Now Allows You to Send Money

[kristine]

Messaging apps these days aren’t just for sending friendly greetings – increasingly, you can also use them to send cold, hard cash. Or the electronic equivalent, at least.

Skype is the latest to join the trend of supporting peer-to-peer payments through a PayPal integration in the latest update to its iOS and Android apps …


TechCrunch explains where to find the feature when you receive the update.

Select “Find” on the top bar while in conversation with a friend or family member, and choose the “Send Money” add-in. You just type in the amount to send, confirm the payment, and hit send to complete the transaction.

Sending money is free if you do it from your PayPal balance, or from a U.S. debit card. You’ll want to avoid using a credit card, though, as PayPal then takes a hefty fee of 3.4% plus $0.30.

Microsoft, which owns Skype, says that while you will need the latest mobile version of Skype to send money, that doesn’t apply to the recipient.

The friend or family member who’s receiving the funds can be using any version of Skype. If you, or your friend who’s receiving the funds, don’t already have a PayPal account, you’ll be prompted to create one the first time you use Send Money.

The partnership perhaps isn’t a surprising one: both Skype and PayPal once had a common parent company, eBay.

The initial rollout is to 22 countries: the U.S., the U.K., Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

Apple will be adding a peer-to-peer payment service to Apple Pay when it launches iOS 11, though PayPal’s CEO has claimed, somewhat optimistically, that it will struggle to compete against the company’s own Venmo app.

Skype is a free download from the App Store. At the time of writing, the latest version hadn’t yet hit.

[nickykenney]

Send money via iMessage and purchase apple services and Product is new features in iOS 11