Facebook Launches Payments Platform

Facebook has officially launched Facebook Pay, its own competitor to online payment services like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Venmo.

Despite the problems the social media giant is facing with its Libra cryptocurrency — PayPal recently announced they would be leaving the founding group of Libra, leading to the exit of Visa, Mastercard, eBay and Stripe, leaving it without the support of a payment processor — PayPal and the major debit and credit card providers are available for use with Facebook Pay.

Users can make purchases from the Facebook Marketplace — limited to a few select stores and pages at first — and can also make donations, buy event tickets, and send money to friends using the payment app.

With regards to security, Facebook Pay will support multimodal biometric security, with users having the option of using a PIN in combination with biometric authentication, depending on the capabilities of the device being used to log into the service.

Facebook also noted that permissions given to the service will not translate across apps — so if a user authorizes a payment on Instagram it will not automatically do so on WhatsApp or Facebook unless further authorization is granted.

Speaking to the security features of Facebook Pay, Vice President of Marketplace and Commerce Deborah Liu said “we designed Facebook Pay to securely store and encrypt your card and bank account numbers, perform anti-fraud monitoring on our systems to detect unauthorized activity and provide notifications for account activity. You can also add a PIN or use your device biometrics, such as touch or face ID recognition, for an extra layer of security when sending money or making a payment.”

Available now in the U.S only — though a wider rollout is promised soon — Facebook Pay will eventually allow users to make payments across all of its four major services including Instagram and Whatsapp, though currently it is limited to Facebook and Messenger.

Sources: Android Central