The concept of mobile payments isn’t new and we’re seeing a lot of competition in the market today. In fact, several years ago, Facebook attempted to get in on mobile payments in the form of Facebook Messenger Payments, where users could send money to each other over the Messenger platform.However, it looks like Facebook could be trying their hand at mobile payments again, and this time with a more robust platform in the form of Facebook Pay. According to Facebook, “Facebook Pay will begin rolling out on Facebook and Messenger this week in the US for fundraisers, in-game purchases, event tickets, person-to-person payments on Messenger and purchases from select Pages and businesses on Facebook Marketplace. And over time, we plan to bring Facebook Pay to more people and places, including for use across Instagram and WhatsApp.”
However, from what we can tell, Facebook Pay seems to be mostly online-based whereas other payment systems like Apple Pay can be used both for online purchases as well as offline purchases. We’re not sure if there are plans to eventually extend Facebook Pay to brick and mortar stores, but as Facebook notes, they do plan to expand it to other Facebook-owned apps and services.