French bank to offer money transfers via a tweet
Group BPCE, one of the biggest banks in France, has announced they are teaming up with Twitter to allow its customers to transfer money via a tweet.
The move coincides with Twitter’s push into the world of online payments as the social network seeks new sources of revenue beyond advertising. Twitter is racing other tech giants Apple and Facebook to get a foothold in new payment services for mobile phones or apps. They are collaborating and, in some cases, competing with banks and credit card issuers that have run the business for decades.
The bank says it is prepared to offer person to person transfers via Twitter to French consumers, regardless of what bank they are with and without the sender needing to know the recipient’s banking details.
"(S-Money) offers Twitter users in France a new way to send each other money, irrespective of their bank and without having to enter the beneficiary's bank details, with a simple tweet," Nicolas Chatillon, chief executive of S-Money, BPCE's mobile payments unit, said in the statement.
Payment by tweets will be managed via the bank's S-Money service, which allows money transfers via text message and relies on the credit-card industry's data security standards.
- Reuters
