PayPal and Facebook are teaming up to make mobile payments much easier.
The companies have teamed up to let consumers make payment’s through the Facebook and Facebook Messenger mobile apps, PayPal announced in a company blog post. You can do almost anything through the mobile apps, from ordering a pizza to booking a hair appointment, as long as the merchant is a PayPal customer. The new feature will soon be rolled out to U.S. consumers with a Facebook and PayPal account.
“This is about allowing you to conduct commerce whenever you want to be doing it,” Anuj Nayar, PayPal’s head of global initiatives, told CNBC. “As more and more of your life goes through the mobile environment, the idea of going to your desktop or laptop for commerce is going away.” By next year, mobile payments are expected to make up half of all digital transactions.
PayPal has about 177 million active consumer accounts and 15 million merchants using its service. About 30% of PayPal payments are currently completed on mobile platforms, and the company likely hopes to grow that number through this partnership with Facebook. The social media site has about 1.57 billion monthly active users, and Messenger boasts 1 billion monthly active users.
Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook Messenger’s head of product, told Fortune in a statement that over a billion messages are exchanged each month between people and businesses, making it “a convenient place to interact with the businesses people love.” Not only can Facebook users easily link their PayPal accounts to Messenger, but they can also mange their receipts within the app.
PayPal hasn’t pioneered transactions through Facebook Messenger. Last month, Facebook enabled a “Buy Now” button that allows brands to sell their products within the app. Even earlier this year, Burger King started accepting payments through Messenger as well.
