PayPal this morning is launching a new bot aimed at making it easier for Slack users to send money without ever leaving their preferred work chat platform. This is the first time PayPal has launched a bot, the company claims, though it’s not the first time PayPal has integrated with a larger communication service.
This past fall, for example, PayPal deepened its relationship with Facebook Messenger, and added the ability for customers to track their transactions within the chat application. It has also been working with merchants to support transactions within their own chatbots on Messenger.
PayPal, too, has integrations with other large platforms, like Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Outlook.com.
Similar to these latter two integrations, PayPal’s Slack bot is aimed at end users directly. Available as a Slack app through the company’s online directory, the PayPal bot can be used by typing “/PayPal” followed by your command once it’s installed. For example: “/PayPal send $5 to @Dave.”
The idea here is that the bot could be used for those quick peer-to-peer payments between co-workers, such as splitting lunch, coffee orders, sharing cab fare, going in on group gifts, and more.
Before using it, you’ll need to link your PayPal account and configure your transactions settings, including when you want to review and approve transactions, PayPal says.
PayPal pointed to Slack’s 5 million daily users as one of the reasons why it chose to launch a bot on its platform. While sizable, there’s also the potential for PayPal to get in early and establish itself as the payments service of choice for Slack users ahead of the company’s further growth and expansions. Slack today has enterprise ambitions, having just announced Enterprise Grid, a product aimed at large corporations.
Additionally, peer to peer payments are one of PayPal’s most used features, the company also noted, citing the $41 billion processed across PayPal, Venmo and Xoom in 2015.
The PayPal bot is available starting today to Slack users in Australia, Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.