PayPal to let Citibank and Chase customers pay with loyalty points

Citibank and JPMorgan Chase customers across the US will soon be able to make online purchases using loyalty points as currency at “millions of merchants” that accept PayPal. Citi is scheduled to launch the feature in 2018 while PayPal’s deal with Chase will also enable customers to make NFC mobile payments in physical stores.

Dan Schulman, CEO at PayPal
PAYPAL CEO: Dan Schulman

“Our partnership with Chase will drive more choice, flexibility and value for our joint customers, enable PayPal to further expand its reach in-store, enable Chase-issued cards to be easily added to newly created or existing PayPal accounts and will allow joint customers to use their Chase Ultimate Rewards Points anywhere PayPal is accepted online and in-app,” PayPal CEO Dan Schulman explains in a blog post.

“Chase cardholders will be able to use the funding sources in their PayPal Wallet in-store for our forthcoming NFC mobile experience, through the use of tokens.”

Chase Pay will also become a “way to fill the PayPal Wallet with Chase-issued cards,” Schulman says, while PayPal-owned payment processor Braintree will add Chase Pay as a method of payment for its merchants.

The partnership to enable Citi customers to use their ThankYou Rewards to pay for all or part of a purchase comes as an extension to a deal announced by the two companies in December 2016 which gave Citi cardholders the ability to pay by card through PayPal at the point of sale wherever Visa and Mastercard contactless payments are accepted.

“Our expanded agreement with PayPal will enable our 14m ThankYou Rewards members in the US to utilise an innovative, intuitive new channel to redeem their points,” says Ralph Andretta, head of US branded cards at Citi. “We also look forward to offering this capability on a global scale in the near future.”

PayPal teamed up with Visa to roll out NFC mobile payments across the US in July 2016. The company announced a similar partnership with Mastercard shortly after.

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