Discover Personal Payments: Send Cash, Earn Rewards

The personal payments space has been heating up lately, with Visa announcing its Personal Payments system, Amex rolling out its digital payment and commerce platform called Serve, and MasterCard also forming its plans for its own personal payments offering.

Not to be left behind, Discover has partnered with PayPal to establish its own payments system dubbed Discover Money Messenger. Discover Money Messenger allows Discover Card holders to send money to nearly anyone for free, and earn rewards on the money sent at the same time.

As the person sending the money, you do not need to have a PayPal account. The recipient of the funds, however, does need to have a PayPal account to claim the funds, though they need not be a Discover cardholder.

Sending money is free and the amount is charged to your Discover card account like a purchase that earns rewards. If you’re sending money to friends or family, there are no fees charged to them to accept the money, but if you are sending money to a business, PayPal will assess the business a fee to claim the funds.

There are account limits to how much you can send per day and per month, and not all Discover cardmembers are eligible for the service, though Discover is not explicitly stating what the criteria are for eligibility. Discover does state that some factors which determine your eligibility are temporary, which means that you may be able to use the service in the future even if you aren’t immediately eligible.

For more info, see this link.