Introducing Payments on Viber, a digital wallet that will eventually replace chatbot payments and money transfers.
The Viber messaging service, owned by the Japanese online sales giant Rakuten, has been tending to become a tool at the service of e-commerce for several years. It already offered money transfers and chatbot payments in several countries. Now, it is enriched with Payments on Viber, a digital wallet.
Available in Greece and Germany to start
This new feature is only available in two countries at the moment, Greece and Germany. Why ? Because the Greeks use Viber massively: the application is installed on 90% of smartphones in the country, and has around 7 million users.
The situation is completely different in Germany, where there are only 3 million followers. However, Ofir Eyal, CEO of Viber, explains that money transfers between these two countries are common.
The implementation of this digital wallet was not directly entrusted to the developers of Viber, but outsourced to the start-up Rapyd. However, the KYC protocol (Know Your Customer) would remain in the hands of Viber according to its CEO. Moreover, the latter specifies that Viber retains the right to collaborate with other payment service providers in the future or simply for other countries.
Indeed, by 2023, Viber plans to extend this digital wallet to other areas, particularly in Europe. Remember that the application is available in just over 180 countries around the world.
A way to attract more users?
Payments on Viber allows you to link bank accounts as well as Visa and Mastercard cards to make purchases, pay bills or simply transfer money. Peer-to-peer transfers between users are the first implemented and they are free. Payments to third parties will, however, be chargeable. For the time being, Viber’s pre-existing payment services remain in place, but will gradually be replaced by the digital wallet.
Finally, be aware that Viber has around 250 million monthly active users: a significantly lower popularity than that enjoyed by other applications such as WhatsApp, to name but one. Who knows, offering more payment services may allow the application to attract new customers.
To download
- Communities and the press area
- The media editor and AR filters
- End-to-end encryption
Viber takes good ideas from several competitors to offer a complete messaging service with rich features. The omnipresence of advertising, however, spoils the experience.
Viber takes good ideas from several competitors to offer a complete messaging service with rich features. The omnipresence of advertising, however, spoils the experience.
Sources: Techcrunch, FF news
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