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Facebook Messenger for Android, iOS, and desktop now lets you send and receive money for free in the U.S.
Facebook Messenger for Android, iOS, and desktop now lets you send and receive money for free in the U.S.
Facebook Messenger for Android, iOS, and desktop now lets you send and receive money for free in the U.S.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s
instant messaging service isn’t just for sending smiley faces and
photos anymore. Now you can use it to send money instantly to your
friends.
Facebook,
the social networking company, announced Tuesday that American users of
its Messenger app would be able to link their debit cards to the
service and use it to message money to each other just as easily as they
send a snapshot or text.
Given
Facebook’s huge size and reach, the introduction of its payments
feature — which has been highly anticipated by Wall Street — is likely
to cause tremors in the nascent market for instantly sending money to
individuals, known as peer-to-peer payments.
As
messaging has begun to eclipse email as the preferred form of
electronic communication, especially among younger users, Facebook has
sought to dominate that market much as it dominates social networking.
The
company’s Messenger app is one of the largest platforms in the world,
with more than 500 million monthly users. And last year, Facebook spent
nearly $22 billion to buy WhatsApp, a separate messaging platform that
now counts more than 700 million active users globally.
In
the United States, a host of peer-to-peer money transfer services have
emerged and are trying to capture the wallets of messaging enthusiasts.
Venmo,
a mobile payments app owned by eBay’s PayPal unit, is perhaps the most
direct competitor to Facebook’s new offering. Popular with young users,
it is not just a payment system, but a social network that allows users
to post public or private messages about what the money is for.
Square,
the e-commerce start-up, offers a similar app that allows payments to
individuals by email. And Snapchat, the start-up known for its
disappearing messages, also allows users to send cash to one another
through a partnership with Square.
With
its service, Facebook wanted to simplify the process as much as
possible, according to Steve Davis, the product manager in charge of the
project.
“We
know that conversations about money are happening all the time,” he
said in an interview. “But most conversations begin in one place and end
in another place.”
Facebook
wanted to keep the payment and the conversation in one message thread
that would also serve as a record. So right next to the thumbs-up button
on the Messenger screen will be a dollar-sign icon to send money. If a
debit card number is already saved in the app, you can send money to the
other person in the conversation by clicking the dollar sign and
entering an amount. The whole conversation will be saved for later
reference.
By
using debit cards to handle the transfer, the money can move fairly
quickly between the two bank accounts while allowing Facebook to offer
the service free of any charges to users. Unlike PayPal or Venmo, “you
don’t have to remember to withdraw the funds later,” Mr. Davis said.
As
with most new Facebook features, the Messenger payments button will be
gradually rolled out to Messenger users in the United States over the
next few months, and will be available on mobile apps as well as the web
version.
Initially
the service will be limited to sending money between people who are
Facebook friends, so it will not immediately compete with Apple Pay and
other mobile payment services meant to allow people to make purchases
easily with their phones. The commercial market, Mr. Davis said, poses a
different set of challenges.
Still, some merchants, particularly overseas, have been informally using Messenger to make transactions, Facebook said.
The
company has a payments business that brought in nearly $1 billion last
year, mostly for items purchased within games hosted on its platform. It
has also been experimenting with an e-commerce system that allows
merchants to list items for sale and collect money for purchases
directly on the social network.
Wall
Street is anticipating that advertising and business transactions
through messaging will eventually be big businesses for Facebook. Mark
Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, agrees.
“I’m
a big fundamental believer that these are going to be very big
contributors to our businesses over time, but we just have to do it
right,” he said in a conference call in January to discuss the company’s
financial results.
Facebook Messenger for Android, iOS, and desktop now lets you send and receive money for free in the U.S.
Reviewed by John walker
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12:10 PM
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