P2P Payments: Facebook Unfolds New Strategy

Photo credits: The Star On Line

The American Web giant Facebook chooses London to establish their new team for WhatsApp-based international payment business.

Goals: Roll out a group-scale payment system.
This system has been tested in India since 2018, enabling WhatsApp users to make payments through the instant messaging service.
The private messaging service –with more than 400 employees already– should be hiring 100 additional people to meet their goal. Most of these employees will be working in London, and some of them in Dublin (where Facebook established their European headquarters).
Ambitions:
- From London, hire engineers from various countries, especially India
- Officially launch a payment service as early as in 2019
- Expand their solution to other countries

Merger project. In order to aim for over 2.7 billion users at once, the American group is working on a plan to merge WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram messaging services. This project, known as Whatstabook, could enable them to rollout the new payment service at Group level.
Potential growth relay. The social media Behemoth aims at diversifying their revenue. In addition to their advertising-related commissioning model (which accounts for roughly 98% of their revenue), they are entering the fast-evolving payment market and see it as an actual growth relay.
London-based Silicon Valley. Despite Brexit-entailed uncertainties, the British capital still attracts FinTechs and Silicon Valley giants. Just like Facebook, other groups, such as Apple, Google or Snapchat, also announced investments in this capital.

Just over a month ago, Facebook announced they were building their own virtual currency for use from Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Once again, they stress their intent to stand out on the market for money transfer services and in-app messaging-based payments.
Facebook follows in their Asian rivals’ footstep. The Chinese company Tencent (WeChat), lets their users transfer money and pay in-store from their mobile phone. With nearly three billion users, the US group’s payment services could soon succeed in becoming references.

Category : Alertes quotidiennes