French bank BCPE and Twitter team up for money transfers via tweets

Nicolas Chatillon, chief executive of S-Money (Picture: Newskr.com)

Paris – One of France’s largest banks is teaming up with social network Twitter Inc. to allow its customers to transfer money via tweets.

The move by Groupe BPCE, France’s second largest bank by customers, coincides with Twitter’s own 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 (AAPL.O) and Facebook (FB.O) 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.

Simple person-to-person money transfers via Twitter
The bank said last month it was prepared to offer simple person-to-person money transfers via Twitter to French consumers, regardless of what bank they use, and without requiring the sender 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.

Last month, Twitter started trials of its own new service, dubbed «Twitter Buy», to allow consumers to find and buy products on its social network. (Reuters/mc/hfu)

The full article by Reuters with more information can be found here…