It’s the era of cheap chat.

Bloomberg is now offering cut-price subscriptions to its messaging tool in an effort to fend off competition from Symphony, the rival service backed by some of the biggest names on Wall Street, according to a report in the FT.

while being an all-inclusive and expensive service, Bloomberg is now looking for ways to boost sales and offering the chat-only service for $10 a month per user, subject to conditions, looks to be a good way to do it.

The service, known as Enterprise IB, has been around but only available to select customer, the FT reported, but now is going mainstream. The move comes amid mounting pressure from Symphony, which is trying to become the financial services industry’s social network of choice by marketing itself as a cheaper, more convenient alternative.

Since launching its $20-a-month communication tools two years ago the Palo Alto-based company has amassed 235,000 paid subscribers, many of them at banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Nomura. About 118,000 are classed as “active,” meaning they have sent or received at least one message within the past month, The FT added.

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