A new digital payment service has been launched by WhatsApp in Brazil, this follows plans from Facebook for a cryptocurrency.
Facebook wishes to bring e-commerce to all of its platforms, however this is the first step following problems with getting funding for Libra.
WhatsApp will allow people to send money through the messaging service to one another free of charge.
This will include making payments to small businesses, something particularly prevalent given the current fear of handling cash.
This was originally mentioned by Mark Zuckerburg, founder and CEO of Facebook in January 2020.
It was mentioned this will be part of a larger rollout across all the platforms the company owns.
“Because payments on WhatsApp are enabled by Facebook Pay, in the future we want to make it possible for people and businesses to use the same card information across Facebook’s family of apps.”
Personal payments will be free, however businesses will be subjected to a small charge for using the B2C service, “processing fee to receive customer payments,”.
The payment system is already being trialled in India and seems to be working well, despite being held up by regulators.
As we know WhatsApp already have a quarter of the worlds population as users, therefore if this takes off we would imagine a lot of money going through the e-commerce service.
