PayPal Launches Bot on Slack to Handle Peer-to-Peer Payments

Bots are a thing: by 2020, Gartner predicts the average person will interact more with bots than they will with their significant other. Already today they assist with scheduling, customer service, and even investment management.

PayPal is now contributing to the bot army with its very first. PayPal’s first bot has been built on the Slack platform, which allows the tool’s five million daily active users to send and receive money without leaving their in-app conversation.

“Whether your colleague picked up the tab at lunch or you are chipping in for a group gift for a teammate’s birthday, sending money from your PayPal account to a friend’s is as easy as typing, ‘/PayPal send $5 to @Dave,'” explains Meron Colbeci, Senior Director, Core Consumer Products, PayPal.

To do so, install the PayPal bot available on the Slack App Directory, then link your PayPal account and set transaction settings.

In 2015, PayPal processed $41 billion in peer-to-peer volume across PayPal, Venmo and Xoom – a 42% increase year-over-year.

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