I used to hate Skype even before it was acquired by Microsoft.

It was buggy, ugly, old-fashioned and completely unreliable.

We've moved our internal team communication to Slack about 2 years ago.

But I see a lot of positive changes there for both common users and chatbot developers.

Microfost is really pushing Skype in chatbot direction with new releases of Microsoft Bot Framework, web chat plugin, releasing a separate tab for chat extensions and plenty of other stuff.

And right now they're adding a new feature there - payments.

The feature is pretty similar to what Facebook Messenger released a couple of months ago together with PayPal - you can easily split any bill across a number of people via chat extension.

Skype’s choice to partner with PayPal was a smart one, as it’s an established name many people have already signed up for.

Considering many business sessions happen via Skype too – like tutoring or singing lessons – it could make it easier to collect payments from clients.

I hope Microsoft will continue pushing Skype in this direction so I can start using it for some of the business communications again 🙏🏻

https://thenextweb.com/apps/2017/08/02/skype-now-lets-send-money-via-paypal/