PayPal Is Now a Payment Option for Samsung Pay

In July, PayPal announced they would be partnering with Samsung to become an accepted payment for their mobile wallet. Yesterday, that promise came to fruition. PayPal said they “have begun rolling out the ability for consumers to use PayPal within Samsung Pay.”

This is essentially a wallet within a wallet. Users can add cards and bank accounts to their PayPal accounts, then use PayPal through Samsung Pay. PayPal is a trusted middleman in the financial world, so this may convince hesitant users to make the switch to mobile wallets. PayPal says they “use a virtual account number leveraging tokenization to represent your account info—so your specific payment information isn’t shared with the merchant.”

Another perk of the partnership is that Samsung Rewards members can still earn rewards with PayPal purchases. These rewards can be used for such things as smartwatches, vacations and sweepstakes entries.

To add PayPal to a Samsung Pay wallet, users can tap the “+” sign in the upper righthand corner of the app, then select PayPal and confirm the addition. PayPal requires a PIN for in-store purchases with Samsung Pay for additional security.

During the setup process, PayPal asks for a “top-up” option. This is an account that will provide extra funds in PayPal if there are no funds available in the PayPal account. Users can select a top-up amount from $10 to $50.

To demonstrate how this would work, let’s say you have to make a purchase for $28. You have $0 in your PayPal account and have $50 selected for your top-up amount. PayPal will top off your PayPal balance with the backup account you selected. Then, Samsung Pay will take $28 from your PayPal balance. The remaining $22 would stay in PayPal until you transferred it to a bank or used it for another transaction.