PayPal iOS App Update Brings Siri Integration to Send and Receive Money
PayPal has updated its iOS app to include Siri integration with support for a variety of languages across 30 countries.
In a post on its official blog, PayPal announced that users of the digital payment service will be able to use Apple’s voice-activated AI personal assistant to send and request money among friends and family.
With so many P2P transactions happening during such a busy season, we’re excited to give our users an early holiday present: starting November 10, Siri will be integrated with PayPal. For iPhone and iPad users running iOS 10, making a payment has never been easier – PayPal users can now send and request money via a voice command with Siri. Simply say, “Hey Siri, send Bill $50 using PayPal.” Voila! One less thing to check off the to-do list this holiday season.
The company says it expects the number of peer-to-peer transactions to increase over the holiday period, and predicts more than 17 million transactions in December alone.
Support for Siri-PayPal integration currently covers the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium (French and Dutch), Brazil, Canada (English and French), China, Denmark, Finland (Finnish), France, Germany, Hong Kong (Cantonese), India, Israel (Hebrew), Italy, Japan, Malaysia (Malay), Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia (Arabic), Singapore (English), Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (French, German, and Italian), Thailand, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates (Arabic), and the United States.
With the launch of iOS 10, Apple opened up Siri to third-party developers for the first time by making a Siri API publicly available. Siri now supports a multitude of app types, including messaging apps like WhatsApp and ride-hailing apps like Uber.
Related Roundup: iOS 10
Tags: Siri, PayPal
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You can now tell Siri to send money via PayPal
Siri is still very much a walled garden, but Apple has slowly begun opening its voice assistant to third parties. At its WWDC keynote back in June, the company confirmed app makers could let iPhone and iPad users send and receive money via Siri, with Square Cash and Monzo becoming the first to tap into that functionality. Now, bigger players are tapping into hands-free money transfers, after PayPal announced it too now lets users in over 30 countries send and request money via using only their voice.
Sending and receiving is very easy, but you’ll first need to link Siri with your PayPal account. This involves granting PayPal access to your Contacts and confirming via two-factor authentication (a code sent via text message) that you are who you say you are. Once that’s done, you can simply say “Send Alice $20 using PayPal” and Siri will display a card summarizing the details of your request before asking you to confirm or cancel the transfer.
The feature is now live in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, UK, United Arab Emirates and the United States. It supports a variety of languages and recognizes your friends’ accounts by either their email address or phone number.
Source: PayPal Blog
Why the Internet fell apart today
If you were on the internet on Friday morning, congrats! You were one of a lucky few who maintained their connectivity in the face of a massive, nationwide DDoS attack against part of the Domain Name System (DNS), a crucial piece of digital infrastructure which, when offline, cripples our ability to access the internet. But despite its importance, the DNS is often overlooked — much like the rest of the behind the scene mechanisms that make the internet work. So before you go resetting your router to see if that clears things up (hint: it won’t), let’s take a quick look at what the DNS does and how it managed to break so spectacularly earlier today.
In the early days of the networking, routing data between two computers might require that you know the target machine’s IP address, a 12-digit string of numbers like 192.168.1.1. Even in the early 1980’s when the “internet” was still the DoD’s ARPANET project and consisted of just 320 interconnected computers, trying remembering all 320 IP addresses would be like trying to memorize the address and occupant of every house in your neighborhood.
So, the internet’s architects developed the DNS, a giant, decentralized database that translates domain names to IP addresses much in the same way that telephone operators used to manually route calls through their switchboards. So when you type “Engadget.com” (aka the top-level domain or TLD) into your browser, the DNS company that hosts that domain converts “Engadget.com” into the 12-digit IP address and routes your request accordingly, starting with the TLD, so that your computer knows where to look for the website data it’s trying to load. What’s more, the DNS automatically updates these registries so if Engadget ever switches hosting companies and its IP address changes, typing “Engadget.com” into a browser will still work.
The DNS is a hierarchical system. At the very highest level, you’ve got the “root servers”. There are 13 of them in all and they handle requests for information about TLDs. So if you type “www.Engadget.com,” it won’t be able to find the exact listing in its zone files — simple text documents that map domain names to their respective IP addresses — but it will return a record of the “.com” TLD and shunt the request to the next server down, the TLD server.
TLD server then looks for “www.Engadget.com” in in its zone file. As before, the TLD server won’t find the full “www.Engadget.com” listing but it will find record of “Engadget.com”. With that information in hand, the request is kicked down to the domain-level servers.
By the time that a request reaches a Domain-level server, it’s only one step away from being fully routed to its destination website. These servers are essentially “the guy who knows the guy” you’re looking for. Domain servers look at the record for Engadget.com, determine that the domain should be www — as opposed to ftp, for example — and then looks up the site’s IP address in their zone files before completing the routing operation.
Normally this all happens on the backend and the process is completely seamless from the user’s perspective. However, hackers can (and just did) attack the companies that run these DNS services. When a service is knocked offline, every site hosted on that DNS goes down as well, unless you know that site’s specific IP address of course.
This is is what US authorities believe happened Friday morning. A group of unknown cyber-attackers launched a huge Dedicated Denial of Service (DDoS) attack — in which small streams of data are funneled to create an unrelenting tide of traffic that overwhelms a site’s servers — against Dyn, a major DNS service. They shut Dyn down for hours. This, in turn, caused a swath of sites that Dyn works for — including Twitter, Spotify, the New York Times, Reddit, Yelp, Box, Pinterest and Paypal — to go dark on Friday morning until the company was able to recover.
Unfortunately, defending against DDoS attacks and the botnets that are used to launch them, is not a particularly easy task. The most common solution, according to CISCO, are firewalls, which act as the network’s watchdog, inspecting data packets and determining their source. If a firewall detects suspicious network activity it will alert the rest of the system. Networks may also incorporate load balancers — systems that spread network traffic out over multiple servers so that no one unit is overwhelmed. Remotely triggered blackholes (RTBH), instead, reroute and drop malicious traffic before it can even enter the network in the first place. Or, if you’re savvy like Pornhub, you’ll simply host your network on multiple registered DNS servers so that even if one goes down, traffic will simply be rerouted to a different service.
That said, there’s no such thing as a perfectly secure network. DDoS attacks like these will continue to occasionally occur for the foreseeable future. But with proper network design and implementation, we’ll be able to mitigate their debilitating effects.
PayPal’s Mastercard deal brings its payments to more stores
PayPal wants to be your go-to payment option online and in stores, but it has a problem: banks and credit cards aren’t a fan of its free bank transfers and other attempts to push online payment over the conventional variety. However, it’s trying to make amends. In the wake of a Visa deal from July, PayPal has forged a partnership with Mastercard that gives the credit card firm higher prominence online in return for more of a retail footprint. PayPal will make Mastercard a “clear and equal” payment choice in its wallet (complete with an image of your card), let you set the card as a default payment method and will “not encourage” you to link a bank account if you’re a Mastercard customer. In exchange, you can use a linked Mastercard in your PayPal wallet to make in-store purchases at contact-free terminals.
It’s a gamble, to be sure: PayPal is hoping that you won’t mind the in-your-face credit card promotion in return for greater shopping freedom. With that said, it might be necessary. PayPal is facing increasingly stiff competition in the internet payment world, including from heavyweights like Facebook. This helps PayPal reduce its dependence on that more vulnerable business and get the drop on rivals that haven’t done a lot in retail.
Via: Wall Street Journal
Source: PayPal, Mastercard
PayPal won’t refund a Twitch troll’s $50,000 in donations
An Australian teen is learning one of the many reasons why you shouldn’t cause grief for Twitch streamers. PayPal has refused to refund Anthony Archer after he made a total of $50,000 in donations to several well-known Twitch users (including LegendaryLea and NoSleepTV) as part of a trolling scheme. He’d intended to cancel the transactions through PayPal a month after making them, leaving the streamers high and dry, but PayPal wasn’t having any of it — he’s on the hook for the full amount. And given that he appears to have used his parents’ credit card, he’s in more than a little trouble with them, too.
It’s not as if gigantic donations are unheard of. Some streamers (including some of those targeted by Archer) have received tens of thousands of dollars in legitimate contributions from wealthy viewers. However, this serves as a reminder that there are risks to making a living from community donations. Unless you have a safety net like PayPal’s, you could lose your shirt to a less-than-sincere fan.
Via: Motherboard
Source: LiveStreamFails (YouTube), Reddit
Turkish law forces PayPal to suspend operations in the country
Turkey and the tech world’s relationship is infamously contentious, and the country has crippled another company: PayPal. Starting this June 6th, the secure payment service is closing up shop, according to a statement (Turkish) spotted by TechCrunch. Paypal users in the country will be able to transfer any balances to a Turkish bank account after that, but that’s about it. Sending and receiving money — you know, PayPal’s main attraction — via the service will be off the table.
The suspension occurred thanks to an application for a license to process payments in the country being denied. Why? Because a recently passed law (PDF) in Turkey demands that a firm’s IT systems be localized to the country itself if the company wants to do business there. PayPal tells TechCrunch that:
“We respect Turkey’s desire to have information technology infrastructure deployed within its borders, however, PayPal utilizes a global payments platform that operates across more than 200 markets, rather than maintaining local payments platforms with dedicated technology infrastructure in any single country.”
We’ve reached out to PayPal for more information and if this will affect the company’s Venmo payment service as well, and will update this post should we get a response. This closure will apparently impact thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of customers. The “new money” the outfit bragged about in its Superbowl ad probably never saw this coming.
Via: TechCrunch, PayPal (Turkish)
Source: Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (PDF)
PayPal to Discontinue Apps for Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Kindle
PayPal recently announced that it plans to pull support for its apps on the Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Amazon Kindle Fire mobile platforms, as the company doubles down on its new and updated apps for iOS and Android (via CNET). Users on the three operating systems in question have until June 30 to access the PayPal app.
In the blog post announcing the impending sunset of PayPal’s app on Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Kindle, the company mentions that on each platform users will still be able to access the money transferring service, through various internet browsers on PayPal’s mobile web experience. PayPal said it hopes this move will help it put all its focus on “creating the very best experiences for our customers.”
It was a difficult decision to no longer support the PayPal app on these mobile platforms, but we believe it’s the right thing to ensure we are investing our resources in creating the very best experiences for our customers. We remain committed to partnering with mobile device providers, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers.
In addition to internet browsers, those with BlackBerry devices can still send peer-to-peer PayPal payments through the BlackBerry Messenger app, and Outlook users can enable the PayPal add-in feature to deliver payments within the email client.
PayPal’s announcement comes a few days after Microsoft confirmed the company is scaling back its mobile phone business. Both Windows Phone and BlackBerry devices have been in a last place competition behind Android and iOS for the past few years, with Windows devices dropping from 2.5 percent of the worldwide smartphone market share in Q1 2015, to 0.7 percent in Q1 2016. BlackBerry fell from an already-miniscule 0.4 percent to 0.2 percent in the same time frame.
The closing of the BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Kindle Fire apps will allow PayPal to renew focus on its popular iOS and Android applications, which it hopes to “innovate and make enhancements” to as the digital payment landscape continues to evolve. In the same blog post, the company reminds customers that they will have to update to version 6.0 of the PayPal app [Direct Link] between June 3 and June 30. The updated app includes a renewed priority on sending and requesting money along with a cleaner aesthetic.
Tags: BlackBerry, Windows Phone, PayPal, Amazon Kindle Fire
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Peter Thiel is the one behind Hulk Hogan’s Gawker lawsuit
Confirming rumors that had grown over the past few days, Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel admitted to the New York Times that he is financing Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media. Its Gawker blog published an article in 2007 titled “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people” (before later publicizing the sexuality of Apple CEO Tim Cook, and a Conde Nast exec) which kicked off this whole revenge-by-proxy legal saga. Hogan’s involvement comes after the site posted a video of the wrestler (real name: Terry Bollea) having sex with the wife of a friend, clipped from a tape with other interesting details. He sued the site and won a $140 million award, which Gawker is appealing.
As detailed by the Times and in earlier reports, Hogan first tipped the possibility of a backer when he avoided making a claim that would have let the news site’s insurance company help out with its defense and any potential damages. Until now however, that was just speculation, before a report by Forbes named Thiel as the figure funding the suit — at an expense of around $10 million so far.
Since cofounding Paypal, Thiel has been an influential figure in the tech industry, funding companies from Facebook to Airbnb. Now, among other pursuits including the well-known Thiel Fellowship, he’s focused on what he calls a “singularly terrible bully.” What will happen to the case and the damage award remains to be seen, although Gawker just had a motion for a new trial denied earlier today. He also confirmed it’s not the only case he’s doing this for, so if it doesn’t shut the network down, there’s always another.
Now that his identity and involvement are confirmed, the question of whether or not it’s ethical to personally finance an extended war against a media outlet (no matter how distasteful or even damaging its content is) hangs over the revelation. I will offer my personal opinion in greater detail after I run it by Peter Thiel — I’m not scared or taking a cue from Wired, I just don’t want to wait ten years to find out I’m on a target list.
Source: New York Times
PayPal is killing its Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Amazon apps
On June 30th, PayPal is forcing all its Android and iOS users to update their apps to version 6 if they haven’t yet. Notice how Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Android Fire users aren’t included in that list? That’s because the company is killing its apps for those platforms on the same day. PayPal didn’t explain why it decided on shutting down its non-Android and non-iOS applications. In her announcement post, PayPal VP Joanna Lambert only mentioned that everyone can still access the mobile website and that it’s still possible to send P2P payments via BBM or to send money from their inbox on Outlook.
The announcement post also said:
“It was a difficult decision to no longer support the PayPal app on these mobile platforms, but we believe it’s the right thing to ensure we are investing our resources in creating the very best experiences for our customers. We remain committed to partnering with mobile device providers, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers.”
Whatever the service’s reason is, you can say goodbye to those apps — we doubt the company will change its mind before the end of June.
Source: PayPal
PayPal stops protecting you when crowdfunding goes bust
PayPal won’t be so crowdfunding-friendly in the future. The payment giant is dropping Purchase Protection for crowdfunding projects as of a user agreement change coming June 25th. From then on, you back efforts at your own risk — if a campaign goes bust or otherwise doesn’t deliver what you were promised, you can’t dispute the PayPal charge to get your cash back. You might not want to take a chance on that too-cool-to-be-true gadget, then.
The move is unfortunate if you like to give artists and inventors a helping hand, but it’s not all that shocking in light of crowdfunding’s riskiness. Kickstarter notes that about 9 percent of its projects never deliver — even though PayPal only handles some of those transactions, that’s a lot of potential refunds. We’ve asked PayPal for its official reasoning, but it might simply be a matter of wanting to keep costs down.
Via: The Verge
Source: PayPal
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