Discover Joins P2P Market

SCHAUMBERG, Ill. – Discover Financial Services is the latest entry into the person-to-person payments market, introducing a service last week that will allow customers to send money from their phone to anyone with an e-mail address or mobile phone number.

Discover’s Money Messenger service, powered by PayPal, follows recent entries by Visa and American Express into the P2P market.

Discover, which has millions of cardholders, is the first credit card issuer to go live on PayPal’s third-party payment platform. Discover’s customers can send money to people in 60 countries, as long as the other person has a mobile phone number or e-mail address. The recipients must have a PayPal account, or can open one after the fact. There are roughly 230 million registered PayPal users today.

A Discover customer does not have to have a PayPal account, and it is free to send cash to people. The payment is treated as a purchase transaction, so members will receive cash back for every transaction, which roughly equates to .25% for the first $3,000 spent.

 

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