A new partnership makes it easier for PayPal customers to find and choose Discover as a funding option within the PayPal Wallet, in addition to allowing them to pay with their Discover Cashback Bonus at all places that accept PayPal.
After the features are enabled, Discover cardmembers will be able to view and use their available Cashback Bonus while using PayPal to pay for all or part of a purchase.
““Discover is focused on making the payments experience seamless and secure for both cardmembers and our merchant partners,” said Diane Offereins, president of payment services at Discover. “This agreement with PayPal helps expand consumer payment choices by providing additional ways to transact, and builds on the growing adoption of digital payments.”
Paypal and Discover
Discover cards will be presented as a clear payment option within the PayPal wallet, making Discover easily identifiable to cardmembers when paying.
According to a press release from PayPal, “This new agreement with Discover, a major issuer of credit products in the U.S., is designed to deliver greater choice to our customers.” The partnership with PayPal comes after other high-profile relationships established with large financial institutions such as Visa, Mastercard, Citi, and FIS, and some not-so financial institutions such as Facebook.
U.S. consumers have nearly $50 billion in rewards value, offering PayPal an enormous opportunity to unlock the value of these rewards by giving customers easier ways to access them in their PayPal wallet and use them when they shop with PayPal’s 15 million merchant accounts.
Additionally, the agreement provides PayPal access to Discover’s tokens, enabling shoppers to use PayPal to make in-store purchases at all Discover contactless-enabled merchants in the U.S.
The partnership is a continuation of a relationship between PayPal and Discover that has dated back to 2012, when they collaborated on numerous in-store opportunities.
Mobile transactions
Mastercard and PayPal also extended a longstanding partnership late last year to highlight the former’s payment options more clearly within PayPal’s platform and offer Masterpass acceptance to Braintree merchants, foreshadowing the potency that financial services’ cross-partnerships can yield. PayPal procured an expanded presence at point-of-sale locations, making it a more visible and viable choice for shoppers paying with their mobile devices, and Mastercard—which recently underwent a revamping—gained the opportunity to tap into PayPal and its Braintree subsidiary’s audiences, a move that will help the brand take competitors such as Visa head-on in the battle for valuable real estate on consumers’ smartphones (
see story).
And a collection of the biggest names in American banking, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, are all partnering to add integration with a new mobile payments network called Zelle, competing with the dominant force in the industry, Paypal’s Venmo (
see story).
“The agreement with Discover leverages each company’s core assets, will add value to everyday spending, and deliver great customer experiences,” said Bill Ready, chief operating officer at PayPal. “Discover has been a long-term strategic partner for PayPal, and we expect that collaborative relationship to continue as we work to offer our joint customers more choice and increased value online, in app and in store.”
