Braintree Powers Facebook Messenger Payments

Braintree, PayPal’s payments processing unit, announced a new partnership with Facebook.

In the agreement, the group will handle monetary transactions made on the social media platform’s Messenger app.

“This new functionality sits right at the intersection of increased mobile commerce adoption and the rapid growth of on-demand services, and ties the two together to streamline a truly mobile commerce experience,” said the company in a press release.

“Only Braintree and PayPal together have the powerful array of vault and tokenization capabilities that make these rich experiences possible, and we are excited for the commerce opportunities we will be able to deliver together.”

The collaboration could not have come at a better time, as Facebook and Uber join forces to allow individuals to book rides directly from the chat application. At the moment, the new ride-sharing feature is currently available in U.S. cities. The social media giant will likely roll out the option internationally, with no specific launch date at this time.

With over 700 million Messenger users (as of June 2015), Braintree certainly has its hands full in supporting the payments functionality of the thriving platform. The group plans to deploy several high-level security layers, including tokenization, to give customers peace of mind when using the app.

“Facebook Messenger had already started to add businesses and brands into the Messenger experience and let users interact with those businesses,” highlighted Aunkur Arya, VP and GM of Mobile at Braintree, during an interview with Quartz.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook plans to offer similar services with Lyft next month. While Uber has formed identical partnerships with other messaging platforms, such as HipChat.

Many are comparing the social media brand’s efforts with WeChat, a popular chat service platform in Asia. The Tencent-owned business was one of the first messaging apps to offer third-party transportation and payment options for consumers.