Skype users can now send money to one another thanks to a new partnership with PayPal.
Called “Send Money,” the new feature lets Skype users in 22 countries link their PayPal accounts and send money with a swipe and a tap within the Skype mobile app.
Those sending money to friends or family will need to download the latest version of the Skype iOS or Android app, though the person receiving it can be using any version. You can find the new feature under the “Find” tab.
Microsoft-owned Skype has more than 300 million users, according to an announcement last year. Skype got a design overhaul in June. Microsoft, which acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, has added new features to Skype over the past few years and sought to get it on as many devices as possible in a bid to stand out from an increasingly large field of messaging app competitors.
This is PayPal’s latest partnership; in the last year, it has inked similar deals with Apple, Slack, and Microsoft to integrate its payment platform — including Venmo — within other apps and services. The company counts more than $7 million in peer-to-peer transactions sent per hour on PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom.
As TechCrunch noted, Skype and PayPal originally partnered a decade ago before Microsoft acquired Skype and before PayPal spun off from eBay.
