Groupe BPCE, France’s second-largest banking group, released more details Tuesday (Oct. 14) about the technology — and privacy hurdles — of the new pay-by-tweet service that was announced last week.
The basics involve downloading BPCE’s S-Money App from the the iTunes store or Google Play store, which are already set up to pay-by-tweet with this new service. Enter bank information and users can Tweet those Euros away. The service is available to anyone with a French bank account and a twitter account, according to an update on VentureBeat.
The service, however, has a few hiccups. First, if the euros is spelled out instead of using the symbol, the payment is rejected. Another issue for some is that the service works just like a Tweet, which makes any banking transaction completed on the service public. There is no option currently for paying through a Twitter direct message.
“Officials at BPCE and Twitter say this could be an advantage for non-profits and public service campaigns,” VentureBeat reported.
“This innovation opens up numerous opportunities in the payments field: charitable donations, crowd funding in all its forms, ticketing, cash-back programs, etc.,” Nicolas Chatillon, chief executive of S-money, said in a press release.