Worldline partners with SnapSwap startup on mobile money messaging

Wordline, the payments and transactional services company, and fintech startup SnapSwap signed a partnership agreement for the mobile payment application Gloneta.

Gloneta will combine mobile messaging with cross-currency transactions and will be powered by Blockchain technology.

 

How will it work?

To send money end users can charge their wallet in the app by transferring money from their bank to their own Gloneta IBAN account. The partnership will soon allow them to safely link their credit card to Gloneta too. Wordline says same-currency transactions will be free whilst cross-currency rates will be competitively set.

Gloneta is available on iOS and Android in all EU-countries from the beginning of August 2016 and will support Euro, British Pound and US Dollar. Future currencies and new functionalities will follow soon.

Wordline said that “peer-to-peer payments via blockchain-technology have a huge potential in the near future where everything becomes more and more digitalized”.

 

Social payments on the rise

The partnership between Worldline and SnapSwap is the latest initiative to bring payments into the world of social messaging.

Earlier in the year, Lendstar, the app that allows people to collect money, divide bills and pay directly into groups or send money to friends, released a new update that features a special payment link that can be shared on Facebook and Whatsapp. This link allows people to pay you back without even accessing the Lendstar app.

Christopher Kampshoff, the CEO and founder of Lendstar, told PaymentEye in the interview:

“Payments happen where people are and where they interact. As social media is exactly doing this, bringing people together and make it easy for them to interact, it is therefore clear that payment and social interaction belong together.”

This belief is shared by Circle Pay. The company lets UK and US consumers send cross border payments with conversion between sterling and dollars without fees and also uses Blockchain technology.

In an interview with PaymentEye, Marieke Flament, the firm’s managing director for Europe said:

“At Circle we believe money should work the way the internet works,” says Flament. “If you look today the internet is instant, free and global – there are no frontiers.

Money does not work that way, it is completely fragmented, it is not cheap at all there is always someone taking a toll on your money and it is not fast.

What we are working on is a social app that enables you to do that. You can send circle money to anyone in a free, fast and super fun way.”

This has been echoed recently at the Money20/20 Conference in Europe, where research firm Edgar, Dunn and Company said that 51% of people surveyed believe social media will capture a larger share of online commerce.

Related reading