Mastercard, Rakuten Viber Team To Bring P2P Transfers To Romania

Mastercard has expanded its partnership with Rakuten Viber to bring peer-to-peer (P2P) payments to Romania via Moneytou, which makes transferring money easy, quick and secure, Mastercard announced on Tuesday (Feb. 25).

Moneytou harnesses the Mastercard Send platform to authorize real-time money transfers to any eligible card. Mastercard Send lets users send and receive money how, where and when it is convenient for them. The solution not only improves users’ payment situations, but is also pivotal in expanding Mastercard’s payment flows, the company said.

“People around the globe are increasingly taking advantage of new, innovative technology to make payment transfers faster and easier. Our partnership with Rakuten Viber, powered by Mastercard Send, allows people to send P2P payments securely within their messaging app.

“This partnership is just another example of how Mastercard Send is providing innovative new solutions for customers and consumers all around the world, enabling them to send and receive money – when, where and how they want,” said Shari Krikorian, senior vice president for Mastercard.

The service is available within the Viber messaging app, which has over one billion worldwide users. Moneytou – a collaboration between Mastercard, Viber, Neopay, Libra Internet Bank and Wirecard – was introduced in Hungary and Ukraine last year, with plans to launch in more European countries.

“Rakuten Viber has set on the mission to not only connect people freely and securely no matter where they are, but also to make a growing number of useful and essential digital services more accessible than ever before. Thus it’s logical that the next big frontier of development for us is the person-to-person payment services, where the innovation in recent years has been growing rapidly,” said Atanas Raykov, senior director at Viber. “We are beyond excited to unite communication and FinTech in Moneytou.”

Viber users who have an account linked to a Hungarian, Ukrainian or Romanian mobile number can send and receive money in their Viber chats without entering payment information. All they have to do is register one card’s credentials. Payment recipients get a chat notification and can get their funds from their bank account within minutes.

“We are very proud to be the first bank in Romania to export its own banking technology as part of an international instant payment project, which now makes its debut on the Romanian market,” said Radu Sabau, manager of the Libra Internet Bank’s card division. “Libra Internet Bank is all about focusing on providing the best possible solutions for customer needs, and thus bringing our contribution to achieving an innovative payment solution such as this is a logical step for us.”

In October, Mastercard announced that it was rolling out Mastercard Bill Pay Exchange with the help of several new partners, including ConEd, Avidia Bank, Aliaswire Inc., OSG Billing Services and Transactis.