Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) may be making a play for eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY)’s electronic payments business as the social network has teamed up with a French bank to enable money transfers via tweets.
According to a report from Reuters UK, Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) along with Groupe BPCE will soon start to enable the French to send money to other people in France by simply sending a tweet.
Nicolas Chatillon, chief executive of S-Money, Groupe BPCE’s mobile payments division, said in a statement that the service will not be available only to customers of the bank. He said that the system will work “irrespective of their bank and without having to enter the beneficiary’s bank details.”
The move is seen as a challenge to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), the report notes. However, it should be noted that Bay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) has a massive stake in the internet payment industry with its PayPal, Inc. division.
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is seen to be branching out to different services as the company aims to generate more revenue aside from those culled from advertising. The microblogging site launched “Twitter Buy” last month, a system that lets users of the service buy merchandise directly on the Twitter website.
According to Reuters, the bank and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) have not yet detailed how the new money transfer system will work. However, the publication did note that S-Money allows people in France to transfer money to other people using credit card standards and text messaging.
Meanwhile, eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) made headlines recently after it announced that it will be spinning off PayPal, Inc. into a separate publicly traded company in 2015. The move by eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) comes after months of pressure from activist investor Carl Icahn to separate the business from the company.
Carl Icahn’s Icahn Capital Lp is the largest institutional investor in eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) with over 30.80 million shares in the company by June 30. John Thaler’s Jat Capital Management owned about 7.33 million Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) shares by the same period.
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