PayPal will “quickly” take advantage of Apple’s opening up of access to the iPhone’s NFC capabilities as part of its new omnichannel payments strategy, President and CEO Alex Chriss has revealed.

“We’ll start with one country in Europe, likely this fall, and then continue to expand over time. And if it happens to work in the US as well, we’ll do that,” he told Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technologies event attendees.

“Customers are looking to use PayPal as their solution for every purchase, everywhere, every time and we need to meet customers where they are. And that means we need to be not just online where we have ubiquity around the world but we also need to be in their pocket when they go to check out and buy their groceries and buy their gas.”

“NFC is one ‘how’, but it’s not the only ‘how’,” he added. “But where it’s available, we will move quickly to be able to offer it.”

Chriss’ comments followed earlier hints that PayPal planned to use Apple’s opening up of its NFC functionality to offer an NFC-enabled mobile wallet and the launch last week of PayPal Everywhere, a new omnichannel payments initiative that has been in beta “for a few weeks”.

As part of the initiative, PayPal is upgrading its rewards programme to offer customers who use it to make an in-store payment the option of selecting 5% cashback on all the purchases they make within their choice of a single merchant category.

So far, the top categories are groceries and gas, Chriss said, “things you would never have thought of using PayPal for in the past.”

In addition, “customers can now add their PayPal Debit Card to Apple Wallet in just a few steps and use it with Apple Pay, enabling even more ways to pay,” PayPal says.

The launch of PayPal Everywhere is backed by a video advertising campaign featuring comedian Will Ferrell using his smartphone to pay with PayPal in a variety of merchant environments.

“Getting cash back hasn’t been this easy since my boys were little, and I’d take extra Monopoly money while they weren’t looking,” Ferrell said. “It’s been a delight to team up with PayPal and help customers earn cash back everywhere.”

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