![]() “We know that conversations about money are happening all the time,” he said in an interview. With its service, Facebook wanted to simplify the process as much as possible, according to Steve Davis, the product manager in charge of the project. And Snapchat, the start-up known for its disappearing messages, also allows users to send cash to one another through a partnership with Square. Square, the e-commerce start-up, offers a similar app that allows payments to individuals by email. Popular with young users, it is not just a payment system, but a social network that allows users to post public or private messages about what the money is for. Venmo, a mobile payments app owned by eBay’s PayPal unit, is perhaps the most direct competitor to Facebook’s new offering. In the United States, a host of peer-to-peer money transfer services have emerged and are trying to capture the wallets of messaging enthusiasts. ![]() And last year, Facebook spent nearly $22 billion to buy WhatsApp, a separate messaging platform that now counts more than 700 million active users globally. The company’s Messenger app is one of the largest platforms in the world, with more than 500 million monthly users. ![]() ![]() But the technology is only beginning to appear in the United States, where email payment services like PayPal have long been more popular.Īs messaging has begun to eclipse email as the preferred form of electronic communication, especially among younger users, Facebook has sought to dominate that market much as it dominates social networking. WeChat, which is essentially the Facebook of China, and other Asia-based communications services like Alipay already allow their hundreds of millions of users to send money via instant message. “Facebook could use this as a back door to get people’s debit cards to enable the buy button,” said Robert Peck, an Internet analyst with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.
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