Facebook not yet ready with digital payments on Messenger in India

Facebook has no plans as of now to bring digital payment facility to its Messenger application in India, informed sources said on Thursday. "There are currently no tests planned for recharges or peer-to-peer payments on Messenger in India," the sources told IANS. Factor Daily had reported that Facebook has begun a beta version of recharge payments for mobile phone and other prepaid services on Messenger.

"Mobile recharge option is a Facebook `Marketplace` offering -- which is actually going on as a pilot test which is right now available to only Android users in some regions," the sources added. Launched in 2016, Marketplace is a user-to-user exchange platform for buying and selling goods with others within the community.

Currently, the peer-to-peer payment service on Messenger is available for its users in the US and the UK. 

More than 1.3 billion people around the world are now using Facebook Messenger every month. The growth of Messenger now puts the app at par with Facebook-owned WhatsApp which also has over 1.3 billion monthly active users (MAUs).

WhatsApp, however, has rolled out the testing phase of its digital payment feature in India -- a first such move globally -- which will be officially rolled out to its over 200 million Indian users in the days to come.

When launched, the new payments feature is set to give a tough competition to Paytm and other digital payment services like Google Tez. The payments feature would take advantage of UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and include support by a number of banks, including the State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and Axis Bank.