From today, Banca Transilvania customers have another way to transfer money by phone, AliasPay, available in the BT Pay app.

Money transfers between accounts held at different banks can be made using the beneficiary’s mobile phone number instead of the IBAN. At this stage, the solution can be used by BT and CEC Bank customers, and the service will expand as more banks add AliasPay to their offering. The transfer relies on defining an Alias, meaning the association of a bank account IBAN with a mobile phone number. You set up the Alias in BT Pay/Profile. 

Banca Transilvania offers three ways to transfer money via BT Pay:

• Instant, free transfer using the phone number from Contacts (to another BT Pay user)
• Transfer by IBAN (to another BT customer or to another bank/a FinTech), instant intrabank and to four banks, or via clearing to all banks
• Transfer using AliasPay, i.e. the mobile phone number instead of the IBAN (for now, to CEC Bank customers)

The service, developed by Transfond, was launched today at the Digital Financial Services Forum and is a first on the Romanian market. Speakers included representatives of the Romanian Association of Banks, the National Bank of Romania, Transfond, CEC Bank and Banca Transilvania. BT was represented by Leontin Toderici, Deputy CEO Operations, and the key messages were:

• We are pleased to be part of this first for Romania’s banking system, with the launch of interbank money transfers using a mobile phone number. Starting today, Banca Transilvania customers can access AliasPay via the BT Pay app, used by 1.2 million people.
• AliasPay brings simplicity, security and scalability. We hope the solution will be adopted quickly by as many banks as possible, as this is our shared market — the banking market in Romania.
• BT’s payments ecosystem includes Instant Payments (also launched together with Transfond and CEC Bank, in 2019), NEO Open Banking — 15,000 accounts from other banks and FinTechs are testing integration with BT (2019), and BT Pay — Romania’s first bank wallet (2018).
• BT is the market leader by interbank payments in RON settled via Transfond: 17.2% of total interbank payments in 2020; 18.1% of the value of bank payments in 2020; and a 19.86% share of instant payments volume in total RON payments.
• Almost RON 72 billion was the value of interbank payments made in 2020 by BT via Transfond.
• More than 21 million interbank payment transactions were processed by BT in 2020 through Transfond.
• We thank our partners in launching AliasPay, Transfond and CEC Bank, and we are confident that very soon more and more banks will offer this solution to simplify everyday online banking.