Hashtag or cashtag? Indian bank allows customers to transfer money via Twitter

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Twitter-based banking has big potential in India, where there are 120 million smartphone users. Photo: Reuters

Published: 11:15am, 21 Jan 2015Updated: 6:11am, 22 Jan 2015

India’s ICICI Bank has launched a new service called “icicibankpay” that allows customers to transfer money using Twitter.

Customers simply need to follow the bank’s Twitter account to register their mobile phone with the bank and then send @icicibank a direct message with the recipient’s user name and the amount to be transferred. The recipient does not need to be an existing ICICI Bank customer.

ICICI Bank, one of India’s big four banks and the second largest in terms of assets, is the second bank to add pay-by-tweet facilities. France’s second-largest bank Groupe BPCE introduced a similar service last year.

Many internet users have a mobile phone or smartphone as their primary computing device in India, where around 185 million of the total 213 million internet users access services through a mobile internet connection last year.

India has a population of 1.2 billion, of which about 10 per cent or 120 million people owned a smartphone in 2014, according to data from research company IDC . But the number of people owning smartphones in India is forecast to grow substantially as an influx of more affordable smartphone, such as the Motorola Moto G and models from local vendors including Micromax.

“This rapid pace of growth in smartphones is expected to continue in India. While we notice that much of the growth is coming from low-cost devices using the Android operating system, Windows is making adequate gains too based on the strength of the entry level product mix in smartphones,” said Kiran Kumar from IDC India.