Siri Can Enable P2P PayPal Transactions

PayPal has taught Siri a new skill: Apple’s voice-based AI assistant can now send peer-to-peer money transactions using PayPal. Announcing the skill in a blog post, PayPal framed it as a development timed for the busy holiday shopping period, noting that the company’s management expects over 17 million P2P transactions to be made over its service in December.

It’s aimed at making the P2P process much simpler, with PayPal asserting that it’s as simple as saying “Hey Siri, send so-and-so thirty dollars using PayPal” to make such a transaction happen. The service is available now in 30 countries around the world, including Canada, the US, China, India, and much of Europe.

The development comes with a bit of industry frisson, given that PayPal is in increasingly direct competition against Apple Pay. But with Apple having opened its Siri platform to third party development in order to foster innovation, it seems it was pretty much inevitable that a rival would seek to take advantage of it. Still, during the busy holiday season, there’s plenty of shopping to go around.