No wallet? With overhauled PayPal app, it's no problem

PayPal's rejiggered app offers a new way to settle up your restaurant bill.  

|
PayPal
With PayPal's new app, you can settle up with vendors or local businesses without ever looking up from your smartphone.

PayPal has released an updated app that allows users to settle up restaurant bills or order ahead without ever removing their eyes from the smart phone screen. 

The free app, which is available on both iOS and Android devices, offers a check-in option for eligible restaurants and cafes – click through and you'll be able to view and pay your bill and even leave a tip. 

"We’ve also vastly improved the in-store shopping experience," PayPal's Hill Ferguson wrote on the company blog. "The PayPal app has a new tab called ‘Shop’, which you can use to find shops or restaurants nearby that accept PayPal payments. You can then 'check in' and open a tab with just a swipe. You can change how you want to pay right on the "check in" screen, meaning you’ve really got access to your entire wallet in the app." 

So is the new app any good? Well, VentureBeat's Devindra Hardawar recently accompanied PayPal’s Anuj Nayar to several Manhattan eateries, during which time Mr. Hardawar got a chance to try out the new software. For the most part, it worked pretty well – Hardawar was able to place an advance order for cookies and pay a bill via the PayPal app. 

"With the new apps and support from more businesses," he writes, "what once seemed like a pipe dream for PayPal – the idea that people can just forget about their wallets and manage their payments with their phones – feels within reach."

But in an interview with The Associated Press, Forrester Research analyst Denee Carrington expressed a little skepticism that people would immediately ditch their wallets in favor of the PayPal app. "People are not struggling with paying. They don't need an easier way to pay. Paying with your card isn't hard," she said.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to No wallet? With overhauled PayPal app, it's no problem
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0905/No-wallet-With-overhauled-PayPal-app-it-s-no-problem
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe