Hisham Sarwar
Previously Facebook announced that it will be building its own suite of payment tools for the Messenger users which will enable people to send and receive money to people on the app. the company first launched its payments in March 2015. At that time it made it possible to send payments between two people using a debit card stored on the app on iOS, desktop, or Android. Now Facebook has allowed users to pay either everyone in the group or individual members just be tapping the payments icon.
This payments icon is present on the Messenger as a dollar sign and can be selected by first clicking on the plus sign that is present on the bottom left-side of the group conversation. It is the same place where other features such as location sharing, games, ride requests etc. are present in a new scrollable user interface.
Facebook states that this new feature is helpful for group conversations. It will be useful for purchasing a group gift or splitting up a restaurant’s bill. This is an area where people used to make payments using other services previously but now, they can use Facebook Messenger’s feature to make all such payments.
Along with sending payments, Messenger users can also request payments from the group with the chat. For this purpose, users need to enter the amount they want to request per person or the total sum to be divided evenly through the entire group. Users can either exclude or include themselves from the calculation. Users can even add a note about what the money is for then tap Request in order to send it to people in the group. In the group, a message will appear indicating who has made the payment. All the details will be visible in full screen on the Request Details option.
Facebook has kept the service free for people to use because this is an area which did not receive much popularity for the platform earlier. Although Facebook was not intending to proceed with its desires with payments section instead it wanted to make Messenger more useful for people. But now it has it has introduced group payment which is an essential feature for today’s all messaging applications. Facebook might face a tough competition in this sector as its rivals SnapChat and China’s WeChat are already supporting in-app payments for their users.
