Pay for your purchases from WhatsApp? It already works!

This is a new step towards monetizing WhatsApp: the possibility for a user to pay small amounts of money to local businesses. This new feature has just been released in Brazil, and soon with us?

WhatsApp may be the most downloaded application in the world, but it is also a burden that does not make any profit. It must be said that it is free and that the Business version for companies does not cover the server, optimization and update costs that Meta (Facebook, Oculus, Instagram) spends. It has always been in Zuckerberg’s plans to monetize his messaging to 2 billion users and there may be something to dig into on the online payment side. Meta is currently testing the possibility of paying for purchases in small businesses…

Pay directly from WhatsApp

Customers can already pay directly in their conversation without going through a banking site. As can be seen in the screenshots from the whatsapp official blog, a person can, for example, create an order for a cake and pay for it directly in the chat. The goal is to popularize a type of payment that is sometimes not accessible to small businesses.

For the latter, it would be enough to have a WhatsApp Business account and to open an account in a Meta partner bank: no need for a site with an online payment system. For customers, they will need to securely register their Visa or Mastercard card in WhatsApp and enter their PIN code at the time of the transaction. A means of payment that could become widespread in emerging countries where WhatsApp Business subscriptions are popular and where bank margins are often too high and deprive small businesses of their margins. It’s up to Meta to stand out…