PayPal has just launched a peer-to-peer payments service

We’ve all been in the situation where someone owes us a few dollars and chasing them down is just hassle and awkward.

To solve that, PayPal has revealed its new PayPal.Me service today as a way for people to request money from anyone across the globe.

PayPal.Me allows you to ‘name your money’ with a personal link allowing people to pay you back easily.

You just need to share your PayPal.Me link, which can be done through text, email, on your blog or social media profile, and anyone wishing to pay you can click on the link, enter the amount, hit send and the money will be transferred to your PayPal account.

All of the links can be personalized so for example, mine could be PayPal.Me/Amanda or if you were collecting for an office party, you could set the URL as PayPal.Me/PartyFund.

While it’s handy for getting money back off people that owe you, it’s also a useful tool for when a group is chipping in together, maybe for a wedding fund or even for a freelancer to accept a payment quickly and efficiently.

This new service is strikingly similar to Square’s direct payments platform, Square Cash, so perhaps this is PayPal’s response.

PayPal recently conducted a study on people’s financial habits. It claims adults in the US, Canada, Australia and Germany are collectively owed more than $51 billion in IOUs.

PayPal.Me aims to curb the awkward conversations and time spent tracking people down to get your money back.

The service is available from today in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, Russia, Turkey, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria.

➤ PayPal.Me