Facebook has launched its new payment service called Facebook Pay in the United States. The service lets users pay other people or businesses across different Facebook services including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
For using this service, you will have to add your debit or credit card to Facebook Pay and select certain apps or all Facebook apps where you want to use the payment option.
Facebook will initially roll out Facebook Pay to Messenger and Facebook in the US this week. It can be used for fundraisers, person-to-person payments, event tickets, in-game purchases and payments to business on Facebookâs Marketplace. Later, it will also be added to Instagram and WhatsApp.
Talking about privacy and security, Facebook claims that it will securely store and encrypt their card and bank account details. There will also be anti-fraud monitoring to detect any unauthorized activity. So, users can use Facebook Pay without worrying much.
In the US, It will compete against popular payment services such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, Square, and Venmo. The only issue with Facebook is trust. The company has lost trust due to its shabby record of handling personal data. So, it will be interesting to see how people react to it.
Here, it is important to note that Facebook has been planning WhatsApp Pay in India for more than 18 months but we are still waiting for this. Recently, the company confirmed that WhatsApp Pay is coming by the end of this year. But India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) told the Supreme Court the company has yet to follow data localization norms. Without this, it cannot launch the service.
