Viber has a large team of engineers working on its app – in addition to voice and video calls and text messaging, it provides a complement of other media and third-party integrations for users. These have so far facilitated “millions” of transfers, but as payments grow they will be phased out, with payments functionality replacing them. Viber also won a security award there recently, he said, “so the brand perception is strong.”įor now, Viber’s pre-existing payment services - such as chatbot payments - will remain in place where they are live - primarily Ukraine, Bulgaria and Hungary, Eyal said. Germany, meanwhile, has just 3 million Viber users, but Eyal described it as a “strong corridor” for transfers to Greece. (there is an option to transfer money to non-Viber users, but it’s less transparent, he said).
Greece is what he described as a “purple country”, where Viber is installed on the phones of around 91% of smartphone users in the country, representing 7 million Viber users out of a population of 10.7 million people, and makes P2P transfer more viable. Viber CEO Ofir Eyal said the reasons for starting with these two countries were strategic first. The service is first launching in two markets – Germany and Greece – with plans to expand to the rest of Europe, then to Viber’s wider global footprint of 180 countries this year and next. Services such as business payments will have fees. Peer-to-peer transfers will be the first of these services to launch, and they will be free.
Linked to other bank accounts as well as Visa and Mastercard, Payments wallets can in turn be used to pay bills and buy goods, as well as transfer money to other people.
Now it’s set to double down on that strategy: It’s launching Payments on Viber, a new service that will let users create digital wallets linked to their Viber accounts. Viber, the messaging app owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, has been dancing in the fintech realm for a long time, launching services like money transfer and chatbot payments in various countries over the years.
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