PayPal's Siri Integration Makes Parting With Money Even Easier

Siri has a new trick. Apple Inc.’s voice-controlled assistant now can use PayPal to send money to, and request money from, anyone in your iPhone or iPad contact list.

It works just as you would expect. Hold down on the home button and say “Hey Siri, ask Wilson to send me $10 for lunch via PayPal” or “Send Mark $15 via PayPal.”

PayPal Holdings Inc. announced it had integrated its iOS app with Siri on Thursday, making it, thus far, one of the most popular apps to do so. When iOS 10 launched in September, Apple announced Siri commands for apps like WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

On the payments side, Siri has been able to send and request money using Square Cash and Venmo, a PayPal-owned app popular with twentysomethings.

If you have several compatible payments apps on your device, and you don’t say aloud which one you want, Siri will ask you.

Once you ask Siri to send or receive money, your device will display a card on-screen that details your request. Siri will ask you to confirm. “Yes” sends the money; “No” cancels the transaction.

Siri’s ability to control third-party apps is still in its infancy, and if it’s going to thrive, it needs popular names like PayPal. While Siri is ahead of Google’s Assistant in this area, Amazon’s Alexa has been working with third-party services almost since the beginning and already controls many things, inside the home and out. And while you can’t talk to Alexa on a phone, Amazon has added it to its current tablet lineup.

PayPal’s Siri integration is currently available in a variety of languages, including English, Spanish, Cantonese, Arabic, French, German, Italian and Hebrew. Before any of this will work, PayPal will ask you to grant Siri access to the app and verify your account using two-factor authentication: You will have to enter an access code PayPal sends via text message.

Apple hasn’t said how many Siri commands are available in total, and its recent third-party integration is limited to iOS. If you ask a Mac-based Siri to send money, the assistant will just pull up some web links instead.

Write to Nathan Olivarez-Giles at [email protected]

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