The idea behind the peer-to-payment service is to erase the awkwardness of getting repaid by someone. Instead of having to ask them, a user could just send his or her friend a PayPal.me link and the friend would be able to pay using their own PayPal account. It minimizes the need for conversation about something that could, theoretically, make someone uncomfortable.

PayPal.me has launched in 18 countries, including the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Canada, Russia, Turkey, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland. Payments between two users in the U.K. will be completely free. For U.S. customers, there are no transfer fees when funds are deducted from a bank account or existing PayPal balance.

According to PayPal, there are $51 billion in IOUs from friends and family due to the hassle in chasing down debts. The company believes PayPal.me will mitigate that problem.

The structure of the URL is: paypal.me/username. PayPal has also allowed users to amend how much money they should be receiving from the payer by adding an amount at the end of the URL. For example, if someone owed $40, the URL would be: paypal.me/username/40.