PayPal partners with Citigroup on mobile payments

PayPal Building Sign

PayPal has partnered with Citigroup to make paying using mobile phones easier. As part of the deal, Citi will become the first bank to have its cards tokenised for in-store purchases using PayPal.

This is the latest move that sees PayPal shift its strategy and work directly with payment cards, after agreeing not to direct its customers away from Mastercard and Visa debit and credit cards.

As PayPal’s chief commercial officer noted: “Partnership has become a core part of PayPal’s strategy, allowing us to provide a new level of financial choice and flexibility to our customers.”

The mobile wallet company has recently worked with Alibaba, Vodafone and Intel.

“The agreement will enable Citi cardmembers in the U.S. to use PayPal seamlessly – online, in-app and in store – in 2017. The agreement advances our goal of offering choice and ubiquity for our cardmembers whenever and wherever they choose to purchase and we look forward to participating as both a major Mastercard and Visa issuer,” said Ralph Andretta head of U.S. Branded Cards, Citi, in a statement.

The deal means that in 2017, Citigroup, with its 143 million customer accounts will allow its customers that load their cards into PayPal accounts to use mobiles at the point-of-sale.

FIS, which recently continued its cardless cash service, is also part of the deal. FIS will enable PayPal’s account linking capability, which is intended to make it easy for customers of FIS partner banks to add cards and banking instruments into PayPal accounts.

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