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USERS of Facebook’s messenger will now be able to make payments for various services without having to go to an external site. A new feature is being introduced, which allows for payments to be completed on the messenger thread.

David Marcus, who is Facebook’s Vice President of Messaging, gave details of the new development at the TechCrunch Disrupt event currently taking place in San Francisco, California. He illustrated the practical potential of the chat bot driven system by using the example of completing all the steps of booking an airline ticket- browsing airlines to accessing customer support and buying tickets –without leaving the Messenger thread. “Now Messenger bots will allow native payments”, he said.

facebook-messenger-klm-800x399 — macrumors.com

News sources indicate that Facebook is working with several payment partners including Paypal, Visa and MasterCard for the feature. With the tool in place, credit card information stored in Messenger can be used to make payments. Because businesses want to take advantage of the avenue that Messenger gives to reach potential customers, Facebook reckons that they will want to buy into this idea by having interfaces from their sites incorporated into Messenger bots. This will mean that people who want to pay for goods or services advertised on Facebook do not have to move away from their Messenger thread.

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This article was first published on 12th September 2016

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.