A new Facebook feature rolling out in the US this week will be available for in-game purchases, event tickets, fundraisers, person-to-person payments on Messenger and purchases from select Pages and businesses on Facebook Marketplace.
Vice president of marketplace and commerce Deborah Liu says it intends to roll out Facebook Pay across Whatsapp and Instagram across the globe in the future.
“Facebook has offered trusted payment experiences since 2007, and we’ve processed more than $2 billion in donations alone since we launched our first fundraising tools in 2015,” Liu says.
“Facebook Pay is part of our ongoing work to make commerce more convenient, accessible and secure for people on our apps.”
The new payment service will run separately to the Calibra wallet, which the social media giant is expected to roll out next year despite major payment providers such as Mastercard and Visa withdrawing from the Libra network.
While Facebook is expected to face on-going scrutiny from regulators over its payment systems, the company’s stock has climbed by more than 2% since Facebook Pay was announced.
Strengthening its ecommerce offering has been a priority for Facebook which is looking to mirror Chinese app WeChat’s success with WeChat Pay.
WeChat Pay has a reported 900 million monthly active users, covering 17 currencies in 49 countries.
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