PayPal has released a Send Money application on Facebook. The App lets users send money to his/her friends on Facebook along with a e-card, photo or video that is posted automatically to the recipient’s wall.

Sending money directly from one person to another is nothing new to PayPal, the company originally started as a service to transfer money between Palm PDAs. In order to send funds to Facebook contacts via PayPal, the user has to log into Facebook and authorize the Send Money app. After login to his/her PayPal account, the client can select a recipient, the amount of money and the e-card. Person-to-person (p2p) transactions within the US are free of charge if the PayPal account of the sending person is funded by a bank account. The service has nothing to do with Facebook Credits, the social network’s own digital currency which does not support p2p transactions so far.

PayPal sees big potential in combining e-cards and p2p money transfer via Facebook – according to the Greeting Card Association Americans send 500 million e-cards each year. JB Coutinho, Senior Product Marketing Manager at PayPal commented in a blog post: “… we’re bringing the largest online payments company to the world’s largest social network to make it even easier to send money to your friends and family directly from Facebook”