PayPal is partnering with hotel payment provider Selfbook to let users search for hotels and make bookings directly within the PayPal app. Selfbook is a booking and payment platform that is usually integrated into a hotel's website, helping them get more bookings on their own site by offering a streamlined interface and digital wallet payment options. Now, instead of just living on individual hotel sites, Selfbook's network will be featured in PayPal's Offers tab.
PayPal is also planning on offering exclusive discounts to users within the app, as well as letting users pay with BNPL for select hotels that have enabled the feature. In turn, Selfbook will transition to using PayPal’s enterprise payment suite to power credit card payments for its hotels. It's also using PayPal as a payments partner within Perplexity, which unveiled a feature that lets users discover and book hotels within the chat back in March.
PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said:
“AI is fundamentally changing how consumers plan and pay for their vacations and getaways. Together with Selfbook, we're embedding hotel booking in the new ways travelers are planning trips with agentic chats like Perplexity. PayPal is thrilled to bring agentic commerce solutions to travel.”
PayPal is aggressively inching towards ‘super app' status and becoming a one-stop shop for money, shopping, and services:
- Aug 2024: PayPal opened its Fastlane service to all U.S. businesses, which is their version of one-click checkout.
- Sep 2024: PayPal integrated its debit card with Apple's mobile wallet and began offering cashback rewards on in-person purchases.
- Oct 2024: PayPal launched PayPal Ads, a new advertising business to help marketers tap into its data on billions of transactions that take place across its network.
- Nov 2024: It introduced a money-pooling feature that makes it easier to collect and pay for things as a group.
- Feb 2025: PayPal partnered with Verifone to pair its 35M terminals worldwide with PayPal's Braintree processing infrastructure, which was rebranded as PayPal Enterprise Payments.
- Apr 2025: PayPal introduced rewards for its stablecoin PYUSD, enabling users to earn 3.7% annually for holding the coin in their PayPal or Venmo wallets.
- May 2025: Perplexity partnered with PayPal to power agentic commerce across its Perplexity Pro platform.
- Jun 2025: In the story above, I mentioned that PayPal is rolling out physical payment cards for eligible U.S. PayPal Credit users.