Everyone’s heard of PayPal, the payments company made famous by Elon Musk (yes, the Tesla and rockets man). Everyone in micromobility has heard of Bird. Put the two together and what do you get? Something very useful for riders.
Yes, to cut this meandering intro short, Bird customers can now choose to pay for their rides using PayPal. If you think that sounds a bit 2005, consider that PayPal now has some 325m customers. Three-hundred-and-twenty-five million.
Then consider that, in a pilot programme run across Europe and the Middle East, a full fifth of new Bird users chose to make PayPal their preferred payment option.
Integrating PayPal into the Bird app means users no longer need to use a debit or credit card, opening access to a wider pool of people who may not have or want to use their cards for this type of application. Better access and more payment options means more people can get scooting, with the knock-on benefits of social inclusion and carbon reduction.
Despite what you might have thought from the introduction, this story does not finish with a reference to rockets. Sorry.
