Paypal to enable voice-command payments for its users
PayPal has integrated with Apple’s Siri software to enable payments and transfers via voice commands. Apple allowed third party developers to access Siri last September, giving others the chance to expand the assistant’s task capacities. The new feature will be available to UK users first, then extended to the US, China, Australia, and India.
PayPal has partnered with Apple to make payments and transfers via voice commands to digital assistant Siri.

Saying “Hey Siri, send Elizabeth £30 for yesterday’s meal using PayPal” to iPhones or iPads running Apple’s iOS software will trigger the payment from PayPal’s app to a specified recipient.

Apple announced it would open up Siri to third-party developers in September, allowing the assistant to complete a wider range of tasks than in the past.

The service will be available to users in the UK from today, alongside 29 other countries including the US, Australia, China and India.

AI-powered voice recognition is an area many of the world’s leading technology firms are investing heavily in. Amazon’s Alexa software, as featured in its wildly popular Echo smart speaker, is currently considered the gold standard in conversational enquiry, while Google’s recently-launched Pixel smartphones ship with its Assistant smart service.

Samsung has confirmed it is working on an an all-new artificial intelligence digital assistant earlier this week, weeks after the company acquired Viv Labs, the artificial intelligence start-up from the creator of Siri.

The tech giant filed to trademark the term Bixby for use in computer software for personal information management, in smartphones, mobiles, portable computers and tablets to “operate voice recognition system” and and “computer software for enabling hands-free use of a mobile phone through voice recognition,” as found online last week.

Samsung phones already feature a form of voice recognition, known as S Voice, capable of performing basic searches and composing messages, but Bixby is likely to be much more sophisticated.

Smarter payments

PayPal said it predicts more than 17m peer-to-peer payments will be made during the month of December alone, as consumer look to split bills and share present money in the run up to Christmas.

Mastercard recently announced plans to create conversational chatbot platforms to enable users to make quick transactions and payments simply by typing queries and response into their smartphone.

The bot will integrate into existing messaging apps, like Facebook Messenger, and aims to make the experience of chatting with the technology as human-like as possible, which Mastercard compares to being as easy as texting a friend.