Facebook helpfully reminds you of your friends' birthdays, so why not use it to send a virtual card and a little cash while you're at it? That's what PayPal's thinking with the launch of a new Facebook app called "Send Money," which does exactly what it says. After authorizing PayPal to access your Facebook account, you can pick a card design for the standard gift-giving occasions like birthdays, graduations, or weddings, then a friend and the amount you want to send, and the card gets posted to your friend's wall (though no one but you and the recipient see how generous or stingy you are). 

Unfortunately, the process doesn't completely take place inside Facebook — the sender is required to have a PayPal account, and the app bounces you over to the PayPal site to complete the transaction in a relatively unobtrusive popup window. Of course, the standard fee of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents applies if you use a credit card, though transactions through a linked bank account are free. PayPal is clearly hoping to take advantage of Facebook's social component to drive traffic and transactions, a Facebook PayPal gift would probably come across as rather tacky to anyone you see regularly in real life — save this for far-away friends and family.