PayPal was one of the service that have deep integration with the Samsung Galaxy S5 environment since release at Mobile World Congress. The Paypal app was announced then for the Gear 2 but wasn’t ready yet. Guess it must have taken quite some time to be sure about the UI they would ultimately go to market with. It’s here now.
The app can now be used to make payments off your smartwatch essentially giving even more functionality to the Gear 2 over rivals in the smartwatch segment. Other watches have the notifications, accepting calls and other fancy things but Samsung looks keen on getting the watch to be a utility rather than a luxury accessory. Samsung is even running a Gear Apps challenge for developers to get more apps specifically for the Gear smart watch, just like they have done in the past for tablets and the Note devices.
The Gear 2 PayPal App is able to show your Paypal balance, receive payments notifications, show offers that can also be saved within the app and in stores that support it, check in to pay for goods and services. Availability of the app is region dependent and looks like it’s not available for the Africa region, or at least East Africa where I am. Tizen Experts say that the app is at version 1.40 which signifies that it has undergone quite some testing to a point where it hits version 1 without going to the market yet.
What do you think, does this effort make the Gear smartwatch something you want to consider as a purchase anytime soon?
Source: Tizen Experts
