Facebook Pay

Maybe this is their effort to actually tell people about the service so they actually use it.

Your comment jogged a vague memory I had about this feature of FB Messenger, but it's not something your average person knows about. Also, I removed FB Messenger from my phone several years ago for being an unrepentant battery drainer.

Seems like it could be the expansion of the service from Messenger to Instagram and WhatsApp too that is the "launch".

Yeah, making payments (via Messenger) has been around for a very long time (March 2015 is the earliest I've known about it).

This does appear to be a type of rebranding, but more importantly a push for Facebook to begin integration with other apps and possible third-parties.

I have FB Payments transactions between friends from August 2015. Looks like over 275 transactions total. Of every money transfer service, its the fastest bar none. It was shockingly good at what it did, given that it was an interface between legacy banks, I hope it stays as high quality.

This is one of those comments that is just so...American. I’m also an American, living in the UK, and the friction inherent in the USA banking system contributes to reverse culture shock. In pretty much any EU country I’ve been to you can pay anyone in seconds from any bank account, any amount, for free, just by knowing their account number and sort code. In the USA instead, banks spend millions trying to handle small pieces of paper (checks) with zero interest in modernising. Oh well.

There are more and more services where you can pay in Bitcoin actually, and it works, although it's still very hard to use and the support is half-baked. Lightning network is not supported enough though, it needs more time.

I ordered a cell phone front screen from China by sending money to a strange web-site that I read about in Reddit and accepted Bitcoin and a Chinese payment system that I don't have access to, I payed with Bitcoin.

I wasn't sure if anything will arrive, but in 10 days I got a package, and the mobile service said that it was the first time they saw a replacement touch screen where the integrated fingerprint reader works as well.

(for the record the web site is http://www.dragon-tt.com )

What about Apple Cash?

WeChat Pay is ubiquitous in China, and has largely replaced all cash use. I'm surprised nobody in the US is worried about Facebook surveilling their financial transactions.

I use Zelle as first choice, venmo only after, here in US. In India, I and almost everybody uses UPI.

They... did.

It could still be backed by a blockchain - in fact, it would make sense to use some kind of hash chain, because then you have a verifiable and replayable ledger / event store / replication log / whatever.

It doesn't need to be distributed and/or use proof of work/stake to be blockchain.

I totally understand the blockchain apathy though.

I don't like Venmo at all. It's hard to get money out and I'm always wary of bank account details stored by a startup. It's good to see this coming from FB and for this specific instance, a bad startup hopefully getting killed. For HN crowd which often defaults to hating FB, I'd say its a tool and like hammer it can be used for good and bad. The good things it has done is literally start and support revolutions, connect long lost friends, keep up with remote relatives and so on. I think their newsfeed algo sucks as they give far more weight to groups and funny video posts then actual friends news but hope that improves.

I do not, but that doesn't take away the fact that millions use the platform. It might gain traction, amongst Facebook users.

they want you to buy something that they show you in an ad

I am eager to see how it well it works in practice

Maybe there’s a small market in the ”Venmo me $5 and see what happens” spam, coming soon to your inbox from a bot with a really hot profile pic

I'd use it.

For example, my roommates and I already have a facebook messenger group chat where we discuss everything. It would be great to have financial matters settled inline as well instead of separately.

Anything from chipping in for more cleaning products to splitting some pizzas to paying rent, things we already do but are complicated by collecting cash irl.

And I could extend this use case to all of the 1:1 conversations I have going on in facebook messenger. I'm not sure how it's not obviously useful unless you simply don't use facebook and don't know anyone who does, which describes none of the people I know in real life.

I could see relatives sending my kids birthday money this way. Especially once it works internationally.

WeChat is the #1 application in China, which i think gets > 80% of usage, last I checked. WePay / mobile payments are _incredibly_ popular. Why _wouldn't_ they try to copy what is working in such a hugely popular app?

(I'm not saying that FB is using this to try to get into China, but more that the sample of "what's working in the industry" shouldn't be limited to just the US.)