You can now use PayPal through Skype’s mobile app

The PayPal partnerships keep coming. The still growing payments giant today announced a new deal with Skype that will allow users in 22 countries worldwide to send money to other Skype users through an updated version of the Skype mobile app. This extends PayPal’s potential reach by a sizable amount – the Skype app has been downloaded over a billion times to date, and has approximately 300 million monthly active users, according to Skype parent company Microsoft, as of last year.

To use the feature, you’ll need to be on the latest version of the Skype mobile app. Then, you’ll 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.

To be clear, the feature is designed for sending money between friends and family – not payments for goods or services from a business. And like PayPal’s peer-to-peer payments on other platforms, the rates are the same. That is, sending is free when you use your PayPal balance or debit card in the U.S. If you choose to use a credit card instead, the fee is 3.4 percent of the transaction amount plus $0.30.

This is not the first time Skype has offered peer-to-peer payments powered by PayPal in its app, though you’ll be dating yourself a bit if you remember when such an integration was announced before!

It was way back in 2007, in fact – back when eBay still operated Skype (before its 2011 acquisition by Microsoft) and PayPal (before its 2015 spinoff). That spring, Skype introduced a feature on desktop that allowed its users to send each other money via PayPal, as part of eBay’s larger plan to integrate its various services.

However, this is the first time that Skype has enabled a send money feature on mobile with PayPal, the company says.

This is the latest in a series of partnerships PayPal has announced in recent months, as it works to solidify its position against threats like Apple Pay and even U.S. banks’ own Venmo-like service, Zelle. And it’s doing so by partnering with former rivals, including Apple, as well as Visa and MasterCard, among others.

The company has also recently announced integrations with Samsung Pay, Android Pay, and Baidu; and extended its partnership agreements with Citi and Chase. And on the technology side of things, PayPal has introduced instant bank transfers, Siri integration, support for payments in iMessage, Slack, and Microsoft’s Outlook.com.

PayPal says the ability to send money will begin to roll out today to Skype users on iOS and Android, in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The full list of supported markets includes: 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.