Cookies is founded by former N26 employees and what differentiates it from US peer-to-peer payment apps is that you don’t have a balance. Any incoming transfer goes straight to your bank account, and outgoing transfers tap directly into your bank account as well.
On signing up, you enter your online bank account information to link Cookies with your bank account directly. TechCrunch.com reports that the startup is compatible with around 4,500 banks in Germany and for the banking back end it has partnered with Deutsche Kreditbank AG (DKB).
Following signing up, you can send money to your friends using a phone number or email address. With each transaction, it initiates a conversation with your friend so that you can send a few messages.
What’s more, you can add an emoji with your payment. Cookies names them paymojis, and some of them have special powers. For instance, the lightning paymoji lets you send a lightning-fast super payment. While it takes 1 to 3 business days for a normal payment, a super payment only takes 5 to 120 minutes.
Compared with the US where people are already familiar and using payment apps such as Venmo, Square Cash, Facebook Messenger payments, in many countries, such as Germany, most people still have to rely on wire transfers and IBANs to send money to their friends.
As it relates to the future, there are two other features that hint at the future of Cookies. First, on the main screen, there’s a giant cookie in the middle. If you tap on it, you can see notifications. Later, the company plans to add an intelligence layer and turn this cookie into a sort of smart assistant.
For now, Cookies is only available in Germany with an invitation system and caps sending at 100 euros per month because the app doesn’t ask for all your personal information. In the future, Cookies could raise this limit by complying with Know Your Customer (KYC) rules and ask for your passport scan and more.
The startup also eyes Austria and Switzerland, and maybe other European countries in the future.
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