(21 October 2016 – Europe) Payments services provider Circle has launched its operations in Europe, starting with euro availability in Ireland and Spain.
The service is currently available on the Android and iOS devices. According to the firm “iOS 10 customers can use Circle directly from within iMessage, in the context of conversations with friends and family, without leaving iMessage and without launching a separate app.”
The firm states that it will commit to serve all of the 500 million European consumers in the European Union/EEA, and will be announcing more countries in the coming months.
The expansion will enable people in the EU/EEA region to send and receive person-to-person (P2P) payments with native Euro support to friends and family within their countries and across borders instantly – with zero fees.
Circle co-founders, Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville said in a statement that Circle’s UK and US customers who hold GBP and USD currencies can now also send and receive euros with customers in Spain or Ireland “in the same way they share messages, photos, or any other content.”
“Circle’s vision is that money should work the way that the internet works: instant, global, free and fun,” they said.
“We can send and receive emails, text messages and share personal content through messaging in this way, but only now has it become possible to share and exchange value and money in the same manner.”
“We are introducing FX pricing that aims to commoditise consumer value exchange across currencies. Over the long run, we believe that the ‘spread’ paid by consumers when exchanging value across currencies will not only approach zero, but reach zero, just as the cost of a voice chat, a text message and an email have reached zero.”