PayPal.Me Peer-to-Peer Payments Service Launched

PayPal on Tuesday announced the rollout of a new peer-to-peer payments service called PayPal.Me. The service is an easy method to get back the money users had lent, or start a collection drive.

The new PayPal.Me peer-to-peer payments lets users easily name their amount and share a personal link to get paid back. "PayPal.Me makes requesting money from groups of friends, family and colleagues suddenly so much easier and faster. Rather than following up individually, you can email your PayPal.Me link to co-workers to chip in for an engagement present for another co-worker. Or stop asking each of your fellow bridesmaids for bachelorette party payments and just send a group text message with your PayPal.Me link," said the company's post.

For instance, a link can be named as paypal.me/ndtvgadgets and can then be sent to groups of friends, family and colleagues using email, instant messenger, social media post, blog, or website. The recipients can then open the link on a wide variety of devices, fill in the amount they want to pay (which was due) and click on send, after which the particular amount is then deducted from their PayPal account and is transferred on to the sender's account.

The PayPal.Me service for now is available in 18 countries - the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, Russia, Turkey, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria.

The company, according to its recent survey, said that "adults worldwide are owed more than $51 billion in IOUs (unpaid, small debts) from friends and family[...]These billions of dollars go unclaimed simply because people hate spending the time to chase down debts, and have those awkward face-to-face conversations. That same study found that over 50 percent of Americans find it awkward to ask their friends or family to pay them back. But PayPal.Me changes everything about getting paid back."

PayPal last month teamed up with BlackBerry, the smartphone maker, to allow peer-to-peer (P2P) payments where the conversation is already happening in the BBM app. Using the service, BB10, Android and iOS users can send money securely with PayPal straight from their BBM app. For sending money via BBM, users will have to tap on the "Send Money" icon in the app and connect a PayPal account. You can start sending money once the receiver (whom you intend to send money to) also connects their PayPal account to BBM.