French bank to launch in-Tweet money transfers

Twitter has recently begun to break into commerce, launching its own buy button last month

When it launched its buy button last month, Twitter made it clear that it saw commerce as a big opportunity to expand its revenue streams. Right now the company almost  exclusively relies on advertising, which may be unsustainable in the long run if user numbers continue to be stagnent.

Now the company is getting ready to take it a step beyond simply letting users buy goods from a tweet, but it will actually start allowing its users to transfer money to each other, according to various media reports, including Bloomberg. 

The service will be offered through Groupe BPCE, which is France’s second-largest bank with 8,000 branches and more than 36 million customers. It was first revealed via a press release last month, and it will be reportedly be launched at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday.

Here is how BPCE described it initially: "Everyone with a bank card and a Twitter account in France will soon be able to send money to other users easily, rapidly, securely and free of charge with a simple Tweet."

The service was developed by S-money, the electronic money subsidiary of Groupe BPCE, which provides an electronic wallet solution on mobile phones. No further details about the service are known at this time. Twitter itself has nothing to do with the new service; it was a BPCE led initiative, and the bank used Twitter's publicly available API documentation to build and launch the feature. 

Still, Twitter is fully embracing this new way to use the network, with Olivier Gonzalez, Twitter France's Country Manager, saying in the press release last month, “We warmly welcome this innovation developed by Groupe BPCE and the service it provides to Twitter users in France by integrating its S-Money service into a live, public, conversational dimension characteristic of Twitter."

And why wouldn't it be happy about this? Like I said, Twitter wants to be in the commerce game and perhaps it sees the BPCE product as a trial run for its own, similar product.

Twitter has already started testing a feature to allow users to buy goods directly from inside a Tweet. It works by allowing the user to hit a button; once it is tapped, the user will get more product details, and will be able to enter both their shipping information and their payment information. The information is then sent directly to the merchant. The user literally never has to leave the Tweet. The test is currently being conducted exclusively on mobile, for the time being.

Commerce is a good opportunity for Twitter to branch out beyond advertising as a revenue stream. In its most recently released earnings report, the company posted quarterly revenue of $312 million. Of that, $277 million came from advertising. The other $35 million came from data licensing.

Twitter has recently been having some major issues with user growth, however, which could potentially put its advertising revenue in jeopardy. Brands need to make it worth their while to spend money putting their product in front of as many eyeballs as possible; if they begin to sense that the Twitter audience has become stagnant, or if the service has become passé, they may simply move on.

Commerce is becoming a hot sector in the social media world in recent months, as Facebook launched its own buy button back in July, an indication that the company does see payments as a potentially bigger revenue stream going forward as well.

VatorNews has reached out to BPCE for further comment. We will update this story if we learn more. 

(Image source: thenextweb.com)