14 DAY TRIAL // PayPal may be dominating online payments, but it's getting some competition on the fresh, new mobile front. Anyone from Square to Google to Visa is trying to get a piece of the pie and PayPal is no exception.
The company has announced a new NFC-based payments app for users to exchange money, from phone to phone.
The app isn't coming until later this summer, which is just as well since there's only one phone with NFC built in, the Google Nexus S, but the move makes it clear that PayPal plans to have a strong presence in the market.
"Today at MobileBeat 2011 we took another step towards realizing the PayPal vision of creating an entirely new way for people to shop and pay – anytime, anywhere and on any device – with the announcement of our peer-to-peer NFC solution," Laura Chambers, Senior Director of PayPal Mobile, wrote.
"Our new NFC-enabled Android widget... lets people pay and get paid in a matter of seconds by simply tapping together two Samsung Nexus S phones," she explained.
The new Android app enables two PayPal users to transfer money. All you have to do is set the amount, tap the two phones together and then enter your pin. The possibilities of this truly are endless, it could be handy in any number of situations.
The app may be simple, but the idea behind it is big. There is growing trend of transferring your wallet to your phone and whoever gets to 'own' that wallet has the chance of tapping into a market worth billions of dollars in just a few years.
PayPal is hardly alone in this, but it does have the advantage of its existing users, which are quite a few. Google is making a big move with Google Wallet, coming in a limited trial this summer as well.