Exclusive: VibePay wins dispute as Rakuten withdraws Viber Pay trademark in Europe

Nine months after the EU trademark case began, VibePay finds itself victorious once again.

Viber, one of Europe’s largest messaging apps owned by $8bn Japanese conglomerate Rakuten, has withdrawn a trademark application for its “Viber Pay” payments service after being successfully challenged by a UK fintech.

VibePay, led by CEO and founder Luke Massie, has been challenging Viber’s application for the last nine months with the EU’s Intellectual Property Office due to similarities with its own trademark, as first revealed by AltFi in August 2022.

Today VibePay was notified that Viber has withdrawn its EU registration, meaning that it will likely have to cease using the “Viber Pay” brand in the EU and internationally, as its international trademark registration was also based on this EU filing.

At the moment Viber's announcement of Viber Pay remains live on its website, but the Greek and German waitlists for the payments feature have been removed.

This isn’t the first time that Massie and VibePay have had to defend their brand, in 2021 Klarna also tried to file a trademark for “Vibe” as the basis of its upcoming rewards programme.

Again, VibePay was successful and Klarna eventually rebranded simply as “Klarna rewards”.

“They made offers to settle and use the trademark, but we declined,” Massie told AltFi today, referring to the latest dispute with Viber.

“The Vibe brand is important to us, we’ve defended it from Klarna using it for their rewards programme and now Viber.”

AltFi has reached out to Viber for comment.