If we need to return money to a friend or we have to divide the restaurant bill, instead of counting banknotes, changing coins and making calculations that often end up missing a few Euros, we can send the necessary money or the shares of all via convenient smartphone payment apps . It is not a matter of exchanging bank transfers or ATM data but of using the phone with a special application that transfers money from one account to another, with a few taps and in an immediate way, without waiting for the transfer. In this guide we will show you all the apps that allow you to send money to friends, relatives and acquaintances in a simple and fast way, any smartphone we own or have our interlocutors (in fact, both Android smartphones and iPhones are fine).
Send money with Android or iPhone in the easiest way
The methods to send money quickly are numerous and are constantly growing: just choose the best method based on the type of accounts we have or on the most used platform among friends and relatives (or in the group of people who have to collect) .PayPal
PayPal is the most popular online service for sending money to friends and relatives, and can be used without problems to create a collection or ask for the payment of a sum to one or more people.
To use it, simply open a PayPal account, register our credit card (also Postepay) or associate the bank account on it, then open the app and log in with the same account registered on the PC. If we have not yet downloaded the PayPal app, we can immediately proceed using the links for Android and iOS (we recommend passing these links on to our friends, so that we can immediately use all the same app).
From the app we can quickly send the money by pressing the Send button, selecting the contact to send the money to (we can also directly enter the email associated with the PayPal account of the person who must receive them), by entering the precise sum, confirming the method of payment to be used and finally pressing the Send money button. For personal transfers there are no commissions, so we will pay only the amount we intend to transfer.
If, on the other hand, we have to receive money from a single person, we click on the Request button in the app, we select the contact and the amount to be requested and finally we click on Request money .
Alternatively, press the button with the three dots at the bottom right of the app and click on Open a Money Box with friends ; in this way we will be able to add more contacts and keep the precise account of those who have paid the requested sum and those who have not yet paid their debt (very useful for sharing expenses between friends or relatives).
To learn more, we recommend reading our guide on how to create a Paypal account to pay and receive payments online and how to pay and receive money from a mobile phone with Paypal Mobile.
Postepay
If we own a Postepay or a Postepay Evolution and our friends are equipped with them, the fastest way to send money with your smartphone is to use the Postepay app, available for Android and iOS.
To use the app, simply access it with the credentials of the Poste Italiane site and use one of the two buttons under the image of the card, namely Pay or Receive . If we have to pay for a shared gift or our share of the dinner, just press the Pay button, indicate the contact to send the money to (he must in turn have installed the app and his phone number must be present in the address book of the phone), indicate the amount to be sent and confirm. If instead we were the organizers of the dinner or pizza in the company, we can collect the fee from all participants by pressing the Receive button, indicating all the contacts to be included in the collection (we can also enter only phone numbers) and the sum to be ask everyone: all participants will receive a notification and can immediately pay the sum with two taps in the app.
Each transfer of money is immediate and instantaneous and is free if less than 25 Euros (plus a commission of 1 € is paid).
If we need more information on the operation of this app and the money sharing service, just continue reading the article on the PostePay App to send and receive money in P2P (Android and iPhone) .
Satispay
Another fast-growing app for sending money with your phone is Satispay, available for free for Android and iOS.
The account management system is slightly different from the other services seen so far: Satispay binds to the current account and allows you to manage a predefined sum of money; if at the end of the week we have more money than the default, the difference will be credited to the checking account; vice versa if we are below the predefined sum, the system will return us to the same sum by debiting the difference from the account.
Once we understand this mechanism, we can use the app to pay small sums or collect collections with all our friends (they too must be registered with Satispay in order to participate).
If all our friends or relatives have a current account, Satispay is among the best methods to quickly pay the sums of money required or to be paid, given the ease with which it is possible to carry out the operation (completely free and without commissions!) .
In addition to the payment of small sums and bills, with the app you can also pay in partner shops, pay bills, pay the most common taxes and top up your phone. We illustrated all the features of the service in our Satispay guide : how to pay in shops and online without a credit card .
Conclusions
To send money between friends, to pay for a collective gift or a "Roman" divided dinner, we recommend using one of the services described above, since it is extremely likely to find the platform that puts everyone in agreement! Other similar services are also present, but their scarce diffusion in Italy could lead to slowdowns in the collection of payments or in the sending of the participation fee.In another guide we showed you how to transfer credit to top up Wind, Tre, TIM and Vodafone, with all the practical and quick methods to top up a phone number by transferring part of our credit.
If instead we wanted to send a top-up online to the number of our relative or close friend, we can do it using one of the apps indicated in our guide on How to make a phone top-up via app .
