Online payments service PayPal has updated its app for Google’s Android OS, adding the ability to transfer money via near-field communication (NFC). The feature allows users with NFC-enabled handsets such as the Google Nexus S or the Samsung Galaxy S II to request money via a home-screen widget. After tapping their phone with a friend’s, the friend enters their log-in information and the money is transferred instantly on PayPal’s cloud-based system.
Writing on the company’s official blog, product experience manager Shimone Samuel notes that NFC is “a really interesting technology that could be one of the ways people will pay and get paid, but that’s all it is – a technology”. PayPal originally announced plans to integrate NFC into its mobile apps at the MobileBeat conference in July and has spent the intervening months working on usability issues. Other features in the updated app include a redesigned landing screen and auto-complete functionality that uses the phone’s address book.
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