WhatsApp has launched in-app payments in Brazil, the company announced in a blog post on Monday.
The payments are enabled through Facebook Pay, which parent company Facebook said last year it would be rolling out to Instagram, Messenger, Facebook, and eventually WhatsApp.
“Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward,” the company said in the post. WhatsApp says its digital payments are an open model that will allow it to add more partners in the future.
The rollout in Brazil was long planned, but may help users who are shut in during the coronavirus pandemic, Idema said. “We can’t have the kind of interactions with each other that we normally would, if you want to lend someone cash or if you want to buy something from a local business,” he said.
The payment system will use Facebook Pay and be free to individual users, while charging businesses a fee for receiving payments.
There will be no fees for consumers to use the payments service, but merchants will pay a processing fee to receive payments. Users need to link a credit or debit card to their WhatsApp account, and transactions are secured with either fingerprint or a six-digit PIN.
The company says it will support debit or credit cards from Banco do Brasil, Nubank, and Sicredi, and it’s working with Brazilian payments processor Cielo.
