July 4th, 2012 2 Comments » | POSTED BY ROB

PayPal App Adds Card Scanner

PayPal’s iPhone app has undergone another refresh, with new functionality which allows you to add a credit or debit card to your account by scanning the card with your phone’s camera.

With a debit or credit card attached to your PayPal account, you can pay for goods and services online without giving out your card details and without requiring a positive PayPal balance; you simply choose which card you wish the money to come from when checking out through PayPal.

I’ve tested out the card scanner (shown above), and although it is intended to make adding cards easier, it’s actually a little tricky. You have to get the card to show within a certain area on your screen, and then hope that the light is right and there’s no glare coming off the card. There’s a chance that this feature is simpler to use on the more recent generation of iPhones with better cameras, but it’s pretty much unusable on my 3GS, it’s far quicker to enter the card details manually.