Described is a technology for executing financial transactions, e.g., payment transfers, by enabling a sender to trigger a money transfer by specifying, in any communication message, a payment proxy having a particular syntax, the syntax including a currency indicator preceding one or more alphanumeric characters. The payment proxy having the syntax indicates an intent of the sender to transfer money to a recipient associated with that payment proxy. The technology can include systems and methods of transferring money by use of a payment proxy within the context of a forum (e.g., social networking platform, microblog, blog, application, etc.). Messages of users in the forum can be monitored to detect for any user's intent to transfer money to a recipient. For example, forum messages can be parsed to identify the syntax carried by a user input in a forum message.