Facebook on Monday made public their first mobile money sending platform on WhatsApp. This is based on Facebook Pay and was first introduced in Brazil and is expected to roll out to other countries in the near future. It works by integrating with local banks and payment processing merchants for businesses to make all these possible.
Users will be expected to link WhatsApp to their local bank to source their funds then transact on the platform sending money their to their friends or make payments for Goods and services directly from the app. WhatsApp is already the world’s largest messaging app and introducing this in many countries and cross-platform will see even faster adoption. Facebook is certainly leveraging on this to push Facebook Pay to as many people as possible. Apple Pay works in pretty much a similar fashion but they are only limited to Apple products users which gives WhatsApp the upper hand in many countries and already existing devices.
WhatsApp Inc. made it public officially on twitter and the tweet is attached below.
To get started in Brazil, Facebook is partnering with these banks to enable the service: Banco do Brasil, Nubank, Sicredi, and also Cielo, a payment processor for merchants.
Ever since Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for $22 billion, it has made gradual changes to it to integrate it with Facebook services with branding, the introduction of WhatsApp for businesses, and other Facebook-like features like statuses. It was thought to introduce Ads but that has never materialized or maybe they chose to postpone or totally get rid of it as reported by The Verge. Facebook Pay will be powering all the transactions across the apps that they own: WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook.
Facebook will learn a lot from Brazil and make the necessary changes before rolling it out to other countries, likely with minimum changes to the product or none at all if they deem fit as it.
As for other payment services, their future remains uncertain. Facebook apps cuts across all demographics and nearly everyone on earth uses at least one of their social apps. people might default to these services for convenience leaving other services like PayPal at risk since monetary transactions form the core of their businesses and make money via sending fees. Facebook pay is free, no sending fees, for now.
