PayPal links P-to-P, customer service to Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger now supports person-to-person payments and customer service for PayPal, expanding the funding choices for repaying friends and family and the channels available to PayPal users sending P-to-P payments.

U.S. PayPal customers can now send and receive P-to-P payments via Facebook Messenger to individuals or groups, and PayPal users also may ask for customer service help from within Messenger, PayPal’s Chief Operating Officer Bill Ready said today in a blog post.

A year ago PayPal became available as a direct payment option for some products and services available within Facebook and Messenger, and PayPal simultaneously made it easy for consumers to link their PayPal accounts to Facebook and Messenger on checkout pages that support PayPal.

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PayPal also began enabling customers to buy items from merchants’ Messenger chatbots using their PayPal accounts beginning last year, with the option to get receipts from those transactions via notifications in Messenger.

PayPal’s first-ever bot-supported customer service channel provides help through Messenger in resetting passwords, handling account inquiries, refunds and other payment issues, according to the blog post.

Consumers have long had other options for sending P-to-P payments on Facebook Messenger; since 2015 the platform has directly supported P-to-P payments among users via credit and debit cards.

PayPal users already had the option to fund P-to-P transactions within Apple’s iMessage service.

The moves underscore PayPal’s ongoing quest for ubiquity across platforms. This week, PayPal also announced its Venmo P-to-P service will handle payments to more than 2 million U.S. retailers.