With iOS 10, Apple added the ability for six categories of application to integrate with the iOS personal assistant, Siri. One of these groups was mobile payments. The PayPal app for iOS has now been updated with this integration, so you can use natural language voice queries to send and receive money.
Using your contact address book, queries like ‘Hey Siri send David $20 using PayPal’ will bring up a confirmation sheet in the Siri conversation with one button to confirm.
When sending money, the recipient will receive an email letting them know that you are trying to give them some cash. They can then log in with their PayPal account, or create a new one, to accept the funds.
Thanks to the flexibility of Apple’s Siri SDK implementation, you can make formal or informal requests about money.
As long as you include the word ‘PayPal’, iOS will associate the question with the app and route it properly. This means shorthand requests like ‘PayPal Benjamin £5’ and slang queries like ‘Shoot John $10 with PayPal’ will all work.
The PayPal support for Siri is localized around the world, so you can use Siri to send money in 30 countries, spanning an array of languages including English, French, Finnish, German, Italian and Hebrew.
To start using PayPal with Siri, just update or install the app from the App Store. The app is free but obviously you’ll need to connect your PayPal account to a funding source (like a bank account) to actually send or receive funds.
