French bank will allow you to send money over Twitter soon

A penny for your Tweets? Your 140-character messages could be worth real money soon, at least in France. Groupe BPCE, the second largest bank in France in terms of customers, is poised to announce a new service tomorrow that will let French customers send money over Twitter, according to Reuters. It’s unclear exactly how the service will work — whether it will use Twitter’s limited direct messaging service or replies, for example — but Reuters points to a statement from Groupe BPCE made last month that says the new service, which will fall under the umbrella of the bank’s existing mobile payments system S-Money, will allow person-to-person payments no matter what bank the sender and recipient are using.

The news comes after Twitter’s introduction of a “buy” button in early September, which allows businesses to let customers purchase items directly within a tweet. Third-party services including Dwolla also already support money transfer options through Twitter and other social networks. Twitter’s recent moves into e-commerce are somewhat ironic, given the fact that former Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey went on to found his own mobile payments startup, Square, back in 2009.