The movement to bring tap and pay — through P2P — may gain some new momentum in Europe through Cookies.
As TechCrunch reported Monday (Nov. 30), the enterprise that lets friends pay friends using technology but with no attached fees is seeking to follow in Venmo’s footsteps across the pond. Through the app, similarly to Venmo, Cookies lets users send money in not-quite-real time to peers.
[bctt tweet=”Cookies will launch its app in beta phase to preface its first quarter 2016 official launch.”]
In an interview with TechCrunch, the cofounder of Cookies, Lamine Cheloufi, said that “the payment field in Europe is kind of broken. And if you take a look at dating apps, you have Tinder, and then you have some apps that people are not using. In the payment space, you don’t have this kind of phenomenon.”
As TechCrunch noted, the movement to adopt an app that lets payments change hands may have some uphill sledding, with the fact that in Europe bank transfers are free — as the site said, “all you need is an IBAN code and time on [your] hands.”
Cookies recently garnered $1.6 million from a number of investors, among them Holtzbrinck Ventures and a number of angel investors.
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A few notable differences distinguish Cookies from eWallet apps, with one standout being that there is no balance in the transaction. As TechCrunch reported, money is transferred directly to accounts.
“We’re not a classical eWallet. Most companies, such as Venmo, are based on an eWallet model,” Cheloufi said. “In Venmo, if I transfer money to you, it’s going to be parked somewhere. Then, you have to transfer it to your bank account. From our side, we make a classical bank-to-bank transaction.”
In addition, the startup supports custom URLs, such as Square Cash and PayPal.me.
