From Bank Account to Bank Account: Transferring Money via Social Media
- By Ginger Hill
- Oct 14, 2014
While social media has many benefits – staying in touch with family and friends, marketing, making new connections – I not too sure that transferring money across these platforms is such a good idea. Groupe BPCE, France’s second largest bank by customers, doesn’t agree with me, however, and neither does Rakuten Bank in Japan. 
Using Groupe BPCE’s S-Money mobile payments unit that allows bank customers to transfer money over mobile phones via text messages, this bank has created a service using Twitter’s open software standards. Its French customers will be allowed to send money to a friend, regardless of which bank they use and without knowing the recipient’s banking details just by tweeting. As far as the security component, details have yet to be released, but are assumed to incorporate an extra layer of identification.
Rakuten Bank in Japan offers a similar service, only with Facebook’s platform. Their “Transfer by Facebook” allows customers who have downloaded the bank’s mobile banking app to send money to anyone in their Facebook friend’s list.
As technology giants’ interest is increasingly piqued about online and mobile payments, you better believe that hackers are already at work trying to figure out how to gain access.
If the thought of sending money via social media platforms doesn’t make you cringe, I don’t know what will.
About the Author
Ginger Hill is Group Social Media Manager.