American Express recently updated its mobile app to make using the card on PayPal a seamless process, simplifying the app-to-app functionality as a new feature from Amex’s Digital Labs team, the company said in an email to PYMNTS on Thursday (Oct. 7).
The new feature, Add Card to PayPal, was created to offer Amex card members a frictionless customer experience. Amex customers can add their card to PayPal by tapping just one button on the Amex mobile app.
The app-to-app functionality will launch first on the Android operating system, with upcoming plans to roll out on iOS. The Amex Digital Labs crew is the internal hub that advances digital innovation across the company.
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“There are different ways of doing this type of product integration, but one way to ensure a really tight connection was to get the apps to talk to each other directly, and we pushed for it,” Stephanie Schultz, Amex’s vice president and head of emerging partnerships at Amex Digital Labs, said.
“We sequenced the work on these features we developed with PayPal, and this last piece — removing all the friction of adding an Amex card to a PayPal account — is so important because it’s centered in the app, where so much commerce is taking place now,” Schultz said.
Amex and PayPal partnered in 2018 to expand their reach to both shoppers and retailers. One of the initial perks was enabling the redemption of Amex loyalty rewards on PayPal for online purchases.
Last year, Amex launched an app feature that enabled its customers to split transactions among friends using PayPal or Venmo or receive funds as an Amex statement credit. Send & Split took two years to get off the ground.
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American Express said that it’s striving to make it easier for people to connect their cards to mobile wallets and PayPal so they can “pay how they want, where they want.”
Aside from being available on the Amex app, the Add Card to PayPal feature can also be used as part of the Amex Instant Card Number.
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