Remember Facebook gifts? It’s still around if you want to send birthday presents to your friends, but now that credit card information stored on Facebook can be used for something else: as reported by TechCrunch, a computer science student founf hidden code in Facebook’s Messenger app reveals that the peer-to-peer payment option exists, and it’s only a matter of time before it rolls out.
https://twitter.com/andyplace2/status/518503570950209536
Initially (if it sees the day of light) it will be rolled out in the US and then propagated to other parts of the world. There is a lot of backend work to be done of course, but PayPal’s former president David Marcus is leading the Facebook Messenger team so there is definitely a lot of expertise involved.
If enabled, this can indeed be big. Whether Facebook will charge a small percentage as a fee is largely irrelevant (depends on the fee amount of course), because the convenience that comes with the service is well worth avoiding the long queues, paperwork, and relative inconvenience of transferring money to your friends and family abroad.
Source: TechCrunch
