PayPal enables voice-activated payments via Siri
PayPal is adding an integration with Siri to let its users conduct peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions with a simple voice command, the financial services company announced Thursday.
Apple's iPhone and iPad users running iOS 10 can now transfer funds by saying, for example, "Hey Siri, send Bill $50 using PayPal."
The integration with Apple's voice-activated assistant comes just ahead of PayPal's busy holiday season. The company predicts that it will see more than 17 million P2P transactions this December. Last year, $41 billion traded hands through P2P transactions on PayPal and its other payment platforms, Venmo and Xoom.
The integration is available in 30 countries and in several languages including English, French, Dutch, Finnish, Cantonese, Hebrew, Malay, Arabic, German, and Italian.
Third-party integrations are making voice-activated assistants like Siri and Amazon's Alexa increasingly useful in a variety of scenarios. Apple opened Siri up to third parties with the release of iOS 10, in an effort to catch up to rivals like Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa. Its early integrations include ones with platforms like Slack, WhatsApp, Uber, Lyft, and MapMyRun.
While voice-activated functions are becoming more relevant in people's personal lives, they're also pushing into the enterprise space. FinancialForce, for instance, recently rolled out a voice-activated ERP assistant.