PayPal builds Slack peer-to-peer payments bot (Video)

PayPal has built its first bot, enabling Slack users to send person-to-person payments without leaving the team messaging app.

Meron Colbeci, senior director, core consumer products, PayPal, says sending money from an account “is as easy as typing, ‘/PayPal send $5 to @Dave.’”

The bot is available to Slack users in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.

The firm says person-to-person payments (P2P) is “one of the most used features” on PayPal. In 2015 alone, it says its PayPal Holdings processed $41 billion in P2P volume across PayPal, Venmo and Xoom – a 42% increase in P2P TPV (total payment volume) year-on-year.

Colbeci goes on to say that P2P payment solutions like the PayPal bot, voice activated payments through its recent Siri integration and in email via Microsoft’s Outlook.com are examples of how PayPal is “continually contextualising how you move your money”.

The company also cites research from Gartner that says by the year 2020, the average person will interact more with bots than they will with their partner. Sounds like a depressing science fiction novel.

Agencies/Canadajournal