“Hey, have you got that tenner you owe me?”
“Nope, cash machine’s broken.”
“No worries!”
*gets out Nexus S, opens PayPal app, bumps phones, £10 get*
PayPal has updated its Android app in the Market, bringing support for NFC-based transactions.
The chief function of the new version is to allow for P2P payments by bumping two phones together. This works by enabling a widget on your phone’s homescreen, which allows you to select an amount of money you want to transfer.
After you’ve done this, you simply tap phones with a friend, and then they’ll get a request to accept the cash. After they’ve entered their password, the moola will have transferred to their PayPal account.
This is great news, as it (ought to) make calling in debts from mates a little bit easier. Obviously, it’ll only work on a select handful of Android phones in the UK like the Samsung Google Nexus S and the forthcoming Galaxy Nexus.
PayPal says that the app ought to work cross-platform as well. So in theory you’d be able to use this to bump money to friends with “the dozens of NFC enabled phones out there today, not just the Samsung Nexus S.” The BlackBerry Bold 9900 and the Nokia 700 notably feature NFC chips; we’re looking forwards to being able to bump money across a variety of different devices using one service.
Google obviously has big plans for NFC. Once Google Wallet is ready for a wider public launch, we’ll expect to see more NFC-enabled Android phones joining the Nexuses (Nexii?).
As great as this is, we still have the nagging feeling that some of our mates will still find an excuse to delay paying us back…
Source: PayPal
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