Pay By Tweet Service Begins In France

Good News For Those French Bankers

French tech-lovers received some interesting news at a banking press conference in Paris on Tuesday (gutted I missed it). Group BPCE, apparently one of the larger banks in the land of the franc, took to the stage to announce a new service that allowed its customers to use Twitter to send money directly to their favourite conglomerates and friends (and enemies, I guess).

The service is already public, and comes in the form of a mobile app called S-Money.

While online money sharing services are a deutsche mark a dozen (wordplay that would work far better if this was relevant to Germany, so use your imagination), the interesting thing about paying by tweet is how public the process suddenly becomes; when you settle debts through Twitter, you're not just transferring money, but also broadcasting to your followers that you've shared it.

This has its biggest implications with charity social media campaigns, which gain a fair amount of traction through Twitter and its complicated spiderweb of hashtags (although they are more prominent on Facebook, where pictures and videos can be shared more easily). With S-money, everybody donating to whichever appeal is fashionable this month (Save the Plankton, anyone?) will not only have proof they’ve actually donated, but also be able to show off just how generous they actually are.

In theory, this could encourage a culture of one-upmanship, where people will compete with friends and strangers to be seen donating the highest figure possible. What's more, campaigners will know who's actually donating to their cause, and who's just scabbing a free ride on the plankton-powered bandwagon.

Twitter payments should phase out mobile donation lines, and we might never need to put our card details onto a new website ever again. This is more good news for campaigners, as the easier it is to donate, the more people will actually do so. Imagine a world where you just need to retweet a message to make your good deed of the day come tumbling out of your bank account.

Currently, the service is limited to those with a French bank account (who statistics say are mostly French), so if you don’t have a penchant for boiled snails then you'll have to wait until the idea spreads to other, better countries before you hop on board.

However, if you are French (sorry for the cheap shot above), here's all you need to do: first, download the S-Money app from iTunes or Google Play. Once you’ve uploaded your credit card info, just sync it with your Twitter account and you're able to tweet yo'self some euro with the following template:

For now, you'll be able to send a maximum of €250 to an individual or €500 to an organisation (think ALS) - about enough to cover a week's rent, and nearly enough to cover a charitable donation if you care about plankton as much as I do.

Emile Cole

Emile is a postgrad from the University of Saint Mark and Saint John. He’s hoping to break into journalism or publishing, and won’t stop blogging until he’s managed it! Follow him @EmileAtSMF.

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