“Send 10 Euros to Sam” – N26 Bank lets users send money with Apple’s Siri

Digital challenger bank, N26, which has been live for one and a half years and has more than 200,000 customers, rolled out a new feature that allows its customers to transfer money using Siri. All they have to do is talk to it.

While many people have been railing against Apple’s excommunication of the headphone jack, the fintech industry has been more preoccupied with Siri and iMessages.

It may not sound tantalising, but Apple, in a bid to stay competitive in the highly innovative worlds of digital assistants and messages, has opened up Siri and iMessages to third parties meaning you can now, WeChat style, order food, go shopping and more through iMessages.

Opening up Siri means that like Amazon’s Alexa, customers can now use Apple’s digital assistant to order and pay for things like Uber and much more.

Digital challenger bank, N26, which has been live for one and a half years and has more than 200,000 customers, rolled out a new feature that allows its customers to transfer money using Siri. All they have to do is talk to it.

iPhone with n26 application and siri open

“Hey Siri, send 12 Euros to Max with N26”. A box within Siri will then appear checking the recipient, the amount and asks for confirmation.

N26 has also integrated payments into iMessage. To “request money” via iMessage users directly choose the desired amount on their N26 keyboard. Users simply have to add the N26 app to iMessage or activate it in Siri’s settings.

“Our customers can transfer money by simply saying a single sentence. It doesn’t get easier than that!” said Valentin Stalf, Founder and CEO of N26.

The 25 EUR limit of sending money is based on the amounts that can be sent by standard NFC payments.

N26 is live in Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Spain and Stalf told PaymentEye, the firm will make a decision on the UK around October.

Complications related to the Brexit vote as well as a rather crowded challenger market including Atom, Monzo and Tandem, may make the decision more difficult, although Stalf insisted the UK remains an interesting market and it’s “likely” the launch will go ahead – regardless of Brexit.

The bank also added an N26 ‘widget’, a new Apple feature that uses 3D touch to bring up extra information, to the Today section. iPhone 6s users “3D touch” the N26 icon to see the widget with their current account balance, their available balance (including Overdraft) and the balance of their Saving/Investment accounts.

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