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People in France can now transfer money with tweets
“That would be five tweets for the croissant, thank you.”
There seems to be two major trends brewing with Silicon Valley’s top tech giants this year. The one is healthcare. The other is payments.
Last week we got news of Facebook flirting with mobile money transfer services via its Messenger app. Apple furthermore unveiled Apple Pay last month, which will allow iPhone 6 and Apple Watch users to pay for goods at checkouts using NFC.
Now — due to a partnership with the major French bank, Groupe BPCE — Twitter is beating the big blue network to the chase. Users in France can now send money via tweets.
Payments via tweets will be managed by the bank’s S-Money service which is Groupe BPCE’s answer to mobile payments — people can pay, receive and transfer money using their smartphone.
As reported by Reuters, “(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.
Last month, Twitter announced experimenting with a Buy button which users can tap or click to purchase merchandise from various accounts such as artists and NGOs:
Since going public about a year ago, it’s interesting seeing how both Facebook and Twitter are branching out to new exciting avenues, beyond advertising. Though, the jury is still out on how exactly the social networks are planning to make revenue off their money transfer services however.
The S-Money service is said to be free, according to the site. And, as a hacker found the case to be with Facebook’s experimental friends-to-friends payment service, there are no remittance fees involved either.
Our thoughts are that if there are no transfer fees, the social networks are probably eyeing more user data. More specifically, they might be gunning for people’s banking details. Another scenario suggests that merchants will eventually be charged.
