After months of talks and trials, WhatsApp has finally pulled the trigger on payments in its app. Today the Facebook-owned messaging service announced that users in Brazil would be the first to be able to send and receive money by way of its messaging app, using Facebook Pay, the payments service WhatsApp owner Facebook launched last year.
“Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward,” the company said in the post. WhatsApp says its digital payments are an open model that will allow it to add more partners in the future.
There will be no fees for consumers to use the payments service, but merchants will pay a processing fee to receive payments. Users need to link a credit or debit card to their WhatsApp account, and transactions are secured with either fingerprint or a six-digit PIN. The company says it will support debit or credit cards from Banco do Brasil, Nubank, and Sicredi, and it’s working with Brazilian payments processor Cielo.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “More to come soon!”, from his own announcement. But given the link with Facebook Pay, one obvious guess might be that we’ll see payments rolled out in WhatsApp in markets where the former service is now live, which include the U.S. and U.K.
“We’re continuing to roll out Facebook Pay on Facebook to more countries outside the U.S. for existing payment experiences, which vary by country and may include experiences such as in-game purchases and fundraisers where already available,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “As we’ve said previously, our goal is to bring Facebook Pay to more people and places over time.”
