Business
PayPal Launches PayPal.Me, A Simpler Way To Request Money Using Your Own Personalized URL
(TechCrunch) – PayPal today is launching a new take on peer-to-peer payments with the debut of a platform it’s calling PayPal.Me. For the first time, PayPal customers will be able to set up their own user profiles which are associated with a personalized URL (e.g. paypal.me/username), which can then be shared with others via text, over email, on instant messenger, via social media, or anywhere else, as a way to request money.
This is not PayPal’s only entry into the peer-to-peer payments space, of course. In addition to offering a “request money” feature on its website, the company also operates Venmo. That social app is especially popular with a younger, highly mobile demographic who uses it as a way to do things like pay back friends for money borrowed, or split a check at a restaurant, for example.
So it may seem odd that PayPal is launching what at first appears to be something of a competitive product to Venmo. But the company explains that, unlike with Venmo, which only works with U.S. banks, credit and debit cards, PayPal.Me is targeting the company’s much broader global user base.
