This German startup bank now lets you send money to people using iPhone's Siri

Berlin-based startup bank N26 has launched a new feature letting customers send and request money through Siri, the voice-activated personal assistant on Apple's iPhone.

From this evening, when Apple's new iOS10 updates, customers can transfer money to friends by asking Siri and can request money from their N26 contacts using Apple's iMessage, according to a press release sent Tuesday.

Users have to tell Siri how much they want to send, to who, and instruct it to use the N26 app. There's a limit of €25 on transfers. Valentin Stalf, founder and CEO of N26, says in an emailed statement: "Our customers can transfer money by simply saying a single sentence. It doesn't get easier than that!"

Apple featured N26, formerly known as Number26, as an example of how to use Siri for payments during its Worldwide Developer Conference earlier this year.

N26 is one of a number of companies trying to make payments more social. The startup bank's announcement comes shortly after Facebook announced that it now lets people make payments using its Messenger app, which has over a billion users. New apps like Circle and Tilt also let people send money through chat windows, using things like emojis to make it more fun.

Digital-only bank N26, founded in 2013, is one of Europe's hottest fintech startups, attracting $40 million from Asian billionaire Li Ka-shing in June. The bank has over 400,000 customers across Germany, Austria, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Slovakia, and Spain.

[Disclosure: BI's parent company Axel Springer has a small stake in Number26 via its Accelerator "Axel Springer Plug and Play."]

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