Messaging startup Symphony will release its first iPhone app next week

Symphony, the secure cloud-based messaging company backed by several financial institutions and also by Google, will next week release its first mobile app for the iPhone, sources familiar with the matter tell Recode.

So far, Symphony's messaging and chat application has been available only via web browsers. The iPhone-only (for now) app is expected to drop either Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, sources say. A beta of its first Android app is coming this summer.

In so doing, it will start to fill in some of the blanks against rivals like Slack, whose popular messaging and collaboration app has mobile versions for iOS and Android. Another long-term rival is Bloomberg's financial data terminal, which has also been adapted to run on smartphones.

Symphony has positioned itself as a highly secure application, in which messages are encrypted from beginning to end, but has also touted its flexibility with systems that banks use to preserve messages, as they're often required to do under regulatory rules.

It's built atop a product first developed by a startup called Perzo, launched by the French software engineer David Gurlé and a small team of developers. A consortium of banks led by Goldman Sachs acquired Perzo in 2014. The company has raised a combined $166 million so far.

Update: We initially said Goldman Sachs acquired Perzo then invited several banks to join a consortium of investors. Perzo was actually acquired by that consortium.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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