A key driver of consideration for a commerce transaction is ease and reliability of payment. Facebook has introduced two payment gateways—Facebook Pay and WhatsApp Pay.
Facebook Pay was launched in Nov-2019, which enabled a user to link their debit/credit card or their PayPal account to the payment gateway. This could enable them to send money to friends and shop online, even in apps other than Facebook. It was rolled out on both Facebook and Messenger app. It plans to launch this in Instagram and WhatsApp too. The payment behavior of a user enables better targeting of adverts to that user on Facebook.
WhatsApp Pay is an in-chat payment feature, currently under beta testing in India since Feb-2018. It is a UPI-based payment service that allows users to both send and receive money. It received approval from National Payments Corporation of India in Feb-2020 to roll out the service in a phased manner. This will be a useful feature in case commerce transactions are brought to the chat platform and will offer users a convenient way to close the transaction using the in-app payments service.
