I have never thought of Facebook Messenger as a payments platform. When I haven't posted on Facebook in a while, my aunts, uncles, and friends from high school send me messages in my inbox. Messenger will handle my money if I let it.
The Facebook Messenger team gave a sneak peek of its new feature in a news announcement on Friday. It is a way to organize and pay joint expenses with friends, roommates, coworkers, or anyone you are splitting bills with. Similar to Splitwise, Split Payments allows you to split the bill evenly, modify the contribution that corresponds to each person, or create a shared expense. You can either include or exclude yourself from the expense.
Once you have all the information in the app, you can send a request to the people who need to pay you in Messenger, receive the payment through Facebook Pay, and transfer it to your bank account.
The Facebook Messenger team said in a news announcement that it would soon be easier to divide up household expenses.
The company did not give any information on Split Payments. It appears that it is designed to be used in Messenger group chats. It is not clear if Split Payment features, such as splitting the bill equally, will be available in these instances.
Not going to lie, Facebook has a track record on privacy, data mining, and everything else, so I don't think I'd give Messenger my credit card info. Messenger is not positioned that way in my brain. It is obvious that it wants me to trust it with my money, but I have other apps for that. They have good customer service and multi-factor authentication.
The feature will be free for users in the US. The feature will be rolled out for everyone in the U.S., but no information was given on when it will be rolled out internationally.
