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French bank starts Twitter money transfers

In France, holding a Twitter Inc. account and a bank card will be enough for anyone to tweet money.

Officials from Groupe BPCE, France's second-largest bank by branches, and its online-payment unit S-Money will let Twitter users "send money to other users easily, rapidly, securely and free of charge with a simple tweet," BPCE said last month in a statement previewing the feature.

BPCE, based in Paris, operates 8,000 branches and serves more than 36 million clients. It also owns a majority stake in Natixis SA, a corporate-and-investment banking and asset- management business.

Apple Inc. introduced an iPhone in September with a mobile- wallet feature that allows in-store payments from a touch screen. EBay Inc. is spinning off its PayPal division to better fend off competition from Apple and Google Inc. as consumers step up the use of smartphones and computers to pay for good and services.

"We warmly welcome this innovation developed by Groupe BPCE and the service it provides to Twitter users in France," Olivier Gonzalez, head of Twitter France, said in the Sept. 11 statement e-mailed by BPCE.

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