Revolut Further Focuses on P2P Payments

The leading European neo-banking Unicorn keeps growing. They launched a multi-currency savings service in April, and are now expanding their P2P payment offer through unveiling a feature called Near me allowing users to send money to their friends… but not just.

Until then, Revolut app users could only send and request money from people whose phone number they had already stored to their contact list. The “Near Me” option is a location-based feature allowing them to transfer money or split bills instantly with any active Revolut users, even if they are not in their address book.

The user visits the “Payments” tab in-app and taps “People Near Me”. The service then displays a list of Revolut users nearby (who also activated this option). He chooses a recipient and specifies the amount he needs to send. This transfer is then instantly credited from one account to the other.

The same process applies to requesting amounts. Revolut reminds that their users may also be repaid by people who do not use the app through the “Rev Me” feature: this option lets them send a request for payment instantly.

Comments – Face-to-face payments again in the spotlight

This start-up founded by Nikolay Storonsky just closed a huge funding round and is speeding up the pace of their development as they aim for global scale and securing their business model. P2P payment apps have been successful lately, leading this FinTech to make it their core business. Revolut is actively working on acquiring more customers in an increasingly competitive market and would like mobile P2P payments to become a casual day-to-day habit, hence their introducing Near Me. As their customers spend ever more time using their mobile phone, this habit may not be too challenging to implement, as highlighted by Lydia in France. Yet, Revolut’s ambition reaching even further since they also want this payment option to be used by people who don’t know each other. The European Instant Payment infrastructure is step by step being implemented, it would then be logical that the current payment landscape should change considering emerging use cases…

This initiative coincides with a relatively similar launch by another neo-bank in the UK. Monzo now let their users standing nearby send and receive money through Nearby Friends. Unlike Near Me, this option relies on Bluetooth connectivity to detect the user’s contacts.