Viber has an instant money transfer service. What's wrong with it?

[zakiyatasnim]

Money transfers are quite popular in Ukraine, so, according to the NBU, in 9 months of 2019, Ukrainians transferred almost 530 billion hryvnias from card to card, which is 41% of the volume of non-cash transactions with payment cards. Of course, such popularity of money transfers has led to a simplification of the transfer procedure itself. If previously this required specialized banking developments, now all these services are migrating to software applications that we use every day, such as text messaging messengers. For example, Facebook launched the function of money transfers between users in Messenger back in 2015, although it was available only to residents of the USA (later - the UK and France), and in the summer of 2019 it generally sharply limited its capabilities. In June of this year, lifecell, together with UAPAY, launched a chatbot for carrying out financial transactions in the BiP messenger. And on December 3, Mastercard and Rakuten Viber , in partnership with NeoPay , Viber's exclusive partner in the Eastern European market, and Edenlab , Mastercard's partner in Ukraine, introduced the Moneytou money transfer service , which allows you to transfer money directly while chatting in the Viber app.



The popularity of P2P transfers is growing
According to statistics, 8 out of 10 card transactions, or more precisely, almost 82% of transactions , are cashless. Back in 2016, this number was 70.6% , that is, the growth rate was an average of 4%. Also, 96% of bank users have a smartphone, and in general we take second place in Europe in the use of mobile payment applications. 32% of Ukrainians make money transfers, and over the past three years this number has increased several times. The average check for a card-to-card transfer is UAH 1,621 , and the share of P2P transfers among all cashless transactions with payment cards by volume increased from 26.4% in 2017 to 41% in 2019.

77% of Ukrainians use instant messengers , and Viber has been leading for several years now — almost 90% (in October — 87%) of subscribers have this messenger on their mobile gadgets. Of course, such popularity of Viber has set the task for the developers of how to expand the functionality of the solution and increase its monetization.

“Our task is to improve a multifunctional platform that meets the daily needs of users in Ukraine. So why not try money transfers through the application? Previously, we had several projects with banks, but today we have made money transfers using Viber a reality: now transferring and receiving money is as simple, efficient and secure as possible,” noted Atanas Raykov, Senior Director of Business Development for Viber in the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

A few months ago, the P2P transfer service was launched in Hungary, making Ukraine the second country in the world where Moneytou is available. In the future, the geography of the service is planned to be expanded uruguay number data to other European countries, in particular Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria. However, cross-border payments between Ukraine and other countries are not yet available: as Mastercard explained, this is due to the requirements of Ukrainian legislation . Also, the service is aimed only at private consumers, formal business payments should not be made through it.

Technological foundations of the service
The Moneytou service integrates the proprietary Mastercard Send technology and the Masterpass digital wallet , to which you can add payment cards of any Ukrainian banks, and of different payment systems. It should be noted that the Mastercard Send technology is registered with the National Bank of Ukraine and complies with all Mastercard licensing rules and PCI DSS security standards.



In order to transfer funds via Viber from Moneytou, the sender needs to:

In the chat window, click the Gif+ button and select the Moneytou service ;
Click "Send transfer" and select the card in the Masterpass digital wallet from which the transfer is made;
Enter the required transfer amount and send the funds;
Confirm sending a notification to the recipient about the receipt of funds.