PayPal brings P2P payments service to Australia

Australian PayPal customers will be able to pay back friends, family and co-workers online through the company's new PayPal.me peer-to-peer payments services.

The aim of the service is to avoid the awkward situation of requesting owed money, PayPal said.

It represents a second leap into the P2P payments market for PayPal, which has owned the Venmo mobile payments business since 2013. 

The P2P payments market is still in its infancy globally, with PayPal.me joining the likes of Canadian start-up Payso, Square Cash and Vodafone-owned M-Pesa.

PayPal.me will allow users to send a link via text, email, chat service or social media post to those that owe them money, asking them to pay up.

The recipient can click on the link and pay instantly, provided they have a PayPal account. PayPal.me URLs can be customised to personalise the link to the sender or recipient.

A transaction fee will be levied if the recipient pays with a credit card instead of a bank account linked to PayPal, at a rate of 2.4 percent plus 30 cents per transaction.

The move pushes PayPal further innto the mobile world and out of its traditional desktop stomping ground - PayPal processed US$46 billion in mobile transactions last year compared to US$750 million five years ago.