After months of planning, Facebook has increased its footprint in the payments industry by launching a payment function in WhatsApp Messenger — and Brazilian users will be the company’s guinea pigs. The highly expected move strengthened WhatsApp’s position in its second-largest market but also has the potential to set up an entirely new payment ecosystem in Brazil.
In a Facebook post, the social media giant’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the WhatsApp Pay function will make “sending and receiving money as easy as sharing photos.” It should also allow small businesses to make sales right from WhatsApp. At first, customers from state-owned bank Banco do Brasil, fintech Nubank, and credit cooperative Sicredi will be allowed to register their cards and transfer money to both individuals and companies.
Cielo, Brazil’s largest payment company, will be the first — and, so far, the only — firm responsible for processing the transactions.
However unprecedented it is around the world, Facebook’s biggest attempt to monetize WhatsApp is actually built upon several business functions that have been successfully adopted by Brazilian companies for years — such as following up deliveries, or presenting a product catalog to customers and even using automatic replies for a 2.0 customer service experience.
Even though Facebook still has not released estimates about revenues or WhatsApp Business’ user base, the impact of the move is expected to be huge. The company did not answer a comment request.
According to the App Annie Report 2019, WhatsApp was the most-used app in Brazil last year. That...
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