Facebook Pay launches for US users on Messenger and Facebook
Facebook has announced its new payments system, Facebook Pay, just weeks after the likes of Visa, PayPal and Mastercard pulled out of its Libra Project.
The new system will allow users to send money to friends, shop through Facebook Marketplace, buy tickets or games and donate to charitable causes across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The social media giant says it’s a separate venture to the Calibra wallet it’s trying to create through the Libra project, assuring users that it “is built on existing financial infrastructure and partnerships” with payments processed by PayPal, Stripe and other global paytechs.
The company, with an annual turnover of $55.8 billion, is rolling out the payments integration for US users this week on Facebook and Messenger platforms. Time to market for Instagram and WhatsApp is yet to be announced.
Related: Mastercard, Visa, eBay and Stripe follow PayPal’s suit and leave Facebook’s Libra
VP of marketplace and commerce at Facebook Deb Liu tells CNN Business that eventually the service will integrate across all four platforms, so if you buy something on one you can access all your shipping details on the others too.
“We believe we can help businesses grow and empower people everywhere to buy and sell things online,” Facebook says in its statement.
“We’ll continue to develop Facebook Pay and look for ways to make it even more valuable for people on our apps.”
Zuckerberg’s company promises “to securely store and encrypt your card and bank account numbers,” with anti-fraud monitoring, notifications for account activity and the option to add a PIN or a face or touch recognition.
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Jakub Zmuda, chief product officer at Modulr, says over email: “Bigtech is known for disrupting any sector it enters and it wants to be embedded in every aspect of a consumer’s life.
“It’s no surprise that, following the announcement of Uber Money, Facebook has announced Facebook Pay, and Google has revealed plans to offer checking accounts. Payments, after all, are a central component to the majority of customer touchpoints, and regulations introduced over the past few years mean it’s now even easier to offer payments services as a non-bank.
“But this new disruptive wave of tech players entering the payments space should not be seen as a threat to fintech. Partnering with big tech presents a fantastic opportunity for fintechs to bring greater innovation to the market and distribute their game changing products down bigtech’s extensive consumer channels.”
