This week, Circle rolls out its social payments app in Spain and Ireland allowing customers to link any Spanish or Irish bank account to Circle to send and receive P2P payments to friends and family within their countries and across borders instantly.
Earlier this year, Marieke Flament, Circle’s managing director for Europe told PaymentEye in an interview, “At Circle we believe money should work the way the internet works. If you look today the internet is instant, free and global – there are no frontiers.”
The company reiterated this ethos in the roll out announcement saying:
Consumers expect to share information instantly and globally, without thinking of barriers at country borders. The internet and open platforms have conditioned us all to this new human possibility. We believe the same can be the case with money.
The expansion into Spain and Ireland means customers who hold £ and $ can now send and receive Euros with customers in those countries, at the same speed, Circle says, as sharing photos or messages.
The company is also making the most of the iOS update that opens up Apple apps to third parties. Now any iOS 10 customer can use Circle directly from within iMessage, in the context of conversations with friends and family, without leaving iMessage and without launching a separate app.
“Our product launches in Spain and Ireland take another step toward realizing our vision of instant, global, free and fun consumer payments. As an EU-licensed E-Money Issuer, Circle is committed to serving all of the 500M+ European consumers in the EU/EEA, and we will be adding more countries over the next several weeks and months,” the company said in a statement.
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