[londons_explore]

Address books in phones don't store people's Bank details, making it a pain to pay someone. Many people don't have their own bank details memorized either.

Being able to send money to someone just knowing their phone number is the real value-add.

[Symbiote]

Within several European countries they do, since the banking systems support sending a payment using a phone number. You get confirmation of the recipient's name before pressing "send".

It's MobilePay in Denmark and Finland, Vipps in Norway, Swish in Sweden, PayM in Britain, etc.

For example, we split a restaurant bill at the weekend. In roughly the time it took one person to pay the whole bill on a card, the rest of us had sent ¼ each to her using her phone number. There are no fees for this.

In the next year or two, this should start to work internationally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mobile_Payment_System...

[evandijk70]

I can send anyone a 'payment' request from banking app on my phone over whatsapp, which they can very easily pay through their banking app.

[hocuspocus]

> Many people don't have their own bank details memorized either.

In the era of ubiquitous smartphone usage, nobody needs to memorize bank account numbers.

But even 15 years ago I would copy/paste my IBAN into an email.

[brnt]

You can ask someones account number.