PayPal’s stock (PYPL) hit a record high this week following the announcement of a ramped-up partnership with Apple that will embed the digital payment option throughout the technology giant’s marketplace. The new functionality will also expand the fintech firm’s reach by bringing this Apple-based payment method to 11 countries across the world.
The news boosted PayPal’s stock, which has been on the rise since mid-April, to an all-time high on Wednesday — and further still on Thursday, July 13, to $58.63 USD. The company’s stock ended 2016 around $40 USD per share.
“PayPal customers will be able to pay for App Store, Apple Music, iTunes, and iBooks purchases across iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices using their PayPal account,” said the company in a statement, adding that customers can also use Siri to authorize PayPal payments on their iPhones.
While desktop clients in the United States have had the option to link PayPal to their Apple account for certain transactions, that capability now has also been expanded to Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Israel, and Australia.
“Customers with a new or existing Apple ID can select PayPal as their payment method from their account settings,” said the company.
The firm added that, “once PayPal has been selected, all future purchases with the customer’s Apple ID will be automatically charged to their PayPal account. This includes purchases of apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books, as well as Apple Music subscriptions and iCloud storage.”
In addition to expanding its functionality with PayPal, Apple recently announced that it would launch a peer-to-peer payment system called Pay Cash that will serve as an extension of its mobile Apple Pay service that was launched several years ago.
“In addition to paying at retail, we use Apple Pay in apps, we use it in the web, and there was one final frontier we wanted to conquer — and that’s Apple Pay for person-to-person payments.” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, this week during an announcement at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.
Photo credit: Kārlis Dambrāns
