TransferWise Looks to Use Facebook Messenger as a Platform
Richard Branson is a name to conjure with on several fronts, so hearing that he has any connection to mobile payments is a point to take notice of. New reports suggest so. as TransferWise—a company in which he’s part backer—is stepping in to make a new connection to Facebook Messenger, one that features mobile payments.
With the new TransferWise connection to Facebook Messenger, users will be able to send money worldwide right from the chat interface. Right now, however, it’s a bit limited on the “worldwide” side of things, working only in Australia, Canada, much of Europe including Great Britain, and the United States. Users can even set up exchange rate alerts to take best advantage of the constant fluctuations in the currency market to get the best results.
While Facebook Messenger users can already send cash within the United States, expansions into the rest of the world have yet to materialize. This system, however, beats Facebook to the punch, and represents the first such move to use Facebook Messenger as a money-sending mechanism.
It’s part of a wider program from Facebook itself, in which it opened up the code on its Messenger app to draw more users into creating enterprise transaction platforms and customer service operations via the creation of chatbots. Chatbots’ increasing popularity makes applications like this a reasonable outgrowth.
Granted, it’s sort of a black eye for Facebook that a third-party developer built what Facebook seemed almost hesitant to build for itself, especially when it already built a payments mechanism that worked with its Facebook Messenger tool. This is a minor issue, though, and Facebook can always wave it aside, noting that it has a lot of irons in the fire. Conversely, it can also try to improve on TransferWise’s efforts to deliver a better system and not have to be the second place system, but rather a late entry that shot to the top of the charts, so to speak.
Still, the big winner here is Facebook Messenger users, who now have a new option to get cash from place to place from a familiar interface. It likely won’t be long, either, until more such options come around.