Microsoft Pay will soon let you pay bills from your Outlook inbox

At Build 2018 today, Microsoft announced that it will soon make bring your Outlook inbox and Microsoft Pay together. With the upcoming integration, Microsoft Pay will let you pay any invoices or bills you receive via email right from your inbox, all without needing to hop over to a different website or service.

"We will soon be introducing payments in Outlook to help users to pay bills or invoices, right in email, without needing to switch to another app or service," Microsoft says. "Powered by Microsoft Pay, payments in Outlook is a fast and secure way to pay from within email."

To begin with, the service will be supported by a select group of payment processors and billing and invoice services. Those include Stripe, Braintree, Zuora, FreshBooks, Intuit, Invoice2Go, Sage, Wave, and Xero.

Microsoft says payments in Outlook will roll out in phases, starting with some Outlook.com users in the coming weeks. Over the next several months, payments will roll out more broadly.

Microsoft Pay integration comes in addition to support for adaptive cards in Outlook. The new card design format is available across several Microsoft services and enables developers to embed context-sensitive actions in messages sent via Teams, Cortana, and more. For more, developers can check out how to take advantage of Outlook Actionable Messages at Microsoft.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the Editor in Chief for Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. Got a hot tip? Send it to daniel.thorp-lancaster@futurenet.com.

34 Comments

I wait for the day when I never need to pull out a credit card again.
You can always use cash then you will never have to pull out a credit card again. I really do not see what is so difficult in going into your pocket, pulling out your wallet, taking your card out and using it? It seems like the more we get machines doing things for us the lazier we get.
You should have stopped right after again. :)
Why? people are getting lazier, getting to the stage where we have to have a device to turn lights on and off because they can not be bothered to get off their backsides. I still blame the TV remote to be honest for this :)
There's a difference between lazy and efficient. Would you rather be in line, waiting for someone to count out cash or, even worse, write a check. Or would you rather be behind a few people that just hold their phone up and pay in an instant?
People are in too much of a rush that is one problem, the other problem certainly here in the UK is not enough staff on checkouts, instead they stick more of those awful self scan things in and while they have a load of checkouts they can open they don't. The same with basket only checkouts, since these self scan things have come along, basket only checkouts have got less. Very few people use cheques these days. I do not mind waiting, as i said to someone who tried to get me to use their selfscan, that it would be quicker.
What kind of backwards, dark ages, Country still uses cheques for general purchases?
Most people have contactless credit or debit cards these days (Visa PayWave, MasterCard PayPass etc), and I haven't seen anyone write an actual cheque for 20 years - shops wouldn't accept them here anyway. But I agree that cash is incredibly inefficient... I've had the same $50 note in my wallet for 6+ months, as I never use cash for anything. When it comes to tax time I know exactly where my expenses went instead of having to hunt for receipts or might've forgotten to get in the first place.
Who would use this? Why would an Enterprise pay their bills from Outlook? Because that's who's using Outlook, it's not Consumers.
I take it you do not uses Outlook.com (hotmail)?? Also I use Outlook client for my personal email at home.
I know it may shock you, so you better sit down, but not all of us use hotmail or what ever Ms wants to call it now and a lot of use certainly do not use the MS eco-system. MS pay is not in the UK anyway and to be honest I think paypal have the market in online payments., i have not even seen google pay on sites, always paypal or debit/credit card.
Hate to break it to you, but MS Pay is available in the UK.... Not very wide spread but I have used it myself a few times
I have yet to see MS Pay in any store in the US
What, how? When did I miss this?
i have never seen it on any website and certainly have not heard of any bank that supports it.
wow a lot Angry here wow
Angry is sort of the natural state of things with a certain group of Windows Central commenters. They apparently don't have much else to do.
Yes I know lol Hopefully I Start my tech company I can make happy
If you do not use the Microsoft ecosystem, why border commenting?
Apple Pay is on some websites. But you’re right, never seen Microsoft pay anywhere. I work in software development at a bank and nobody here has even heard of Microsoft pay.
Good point. I was thinking Outlook the software. I do use Outlook.com. And perhaps it would be of use to somebody... I suppose. That said, I still don't use MS Bill Pay for anything. In fact I didn't even know it existed! I use autopay with a cc with cashback when possible (citicard double cash), and when not possible I use ACH debit its just easier, and cleaner. But for the ONE app that I do pay manually online, my Citibank card, I use their app... on my iPhone, because of course the MS Store has no Win 10 mobile app for Citicard… or any other bloody credit card for that matter!
So will I can also pay with my Lumia 950 using NFC!? I'm make it my bank for all payments!
Another desperate attempt of MS trying to catch up. 99,9% of customers payments are made on android or ios phones. Why bother with a soon to be discontinued MS solution if you have another one kind of integrated payment solution on your phone.
Maybe because this is beyond windows phone???? Not sure in what reality MS is dropping their pay system, when clearly the attempt here is to make this broadly an ecosystem wide solution.
PayPal 😊
PayPal has done some crazy stuff last couple years
US only?
yes I think so but the Funny thing about that they talk about how we are interconnected global economy now too lol
Different country different rules... e.g. you can publish (digital) app to every countries in the world instantly without a publisher. But you cannot do the same with digital movie, music and console games. Local retails / industry won't let you take away their butter and bread without a fight.
Phishing attackers rejoice! MS will make your job even easier for you!
A while ago there was a talk about MS Pay for websites, you can request Pay api with javascript or something, any development?
This is really a re-announcement. Back in 2012 they announced a payment platform on mobile devices using Windowsphone. All those Nokia devices with NFC that could do payments. Now the ambition is to pay someone with Outlook. At a retail outlet I have my phone not Outlook.
This isn't for paying retail outlets, it's for paying bills. SO you receive your monthly (whatever) electricity bill and I would assume, the concept is that you click a button on the email and it will process a payment for the bill, without having to open a separate app/program. Direct Debit is arguably easier and more efficient, however with a fluctuating bill (like the aforementioned electricity) it's good to control when you drop the money on it as having a random amount come out of a person's account can be detrimental to budgeting.
Search in my Outlook was not working at all. Something was wrong with Indexing from what I understood. Tried fixing it myself without any luck so contacted service at outlooksupport. 4team. biz and they got it fixed for me. They even explained how it works, so I would definitely recommend them if you need any assistance regarding Outlook search.

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