Facebook picks Brazil for first commercial rollout of WhatsApp payments

Smartphones showing how Facebook's WhatsApp payments works in Brazil
FACEBOOK FIRST: Brazilian shoppers can now use WhatsApp to transfer money and make payments to merchants

WhatsApp users in Brazil can now make payments to local merchants and send money to friends and contacts “without leaving their chat”.

“Payments on WhatsApp are enabled by Facebook Pay,” WhatsApp says. “In the future we want to make it possible for people and businesses to use the same card information across Facebook’s family of apps.”

“We have built payments with security in mind and a special six-digit PIN or fingerprint will be required to prevent unauthorised transactions,” it adds.

“To start, we will support debit or credit cards from Banco do Brasil, Nubank and Sicredi on the Visa and Mastercard networks — and we are working with Cielo, the leading payments processor in Brazil. We have built an open model to welcome more partners in the future.

“Sending money or making a purchase on WhatsApp is free for people. Businesses will pay a processing fee to receive customer payments, similar to what they may already pay when accepting a credit card transaction.”

The P2P payments element leverages Mastercard Send and Visa Direct. Merchant payments use Mastercard and Visa’s tokenization services — including a new Visa Cloud Tokens service that works across multiple devices.

“Cloud tokens can be enabled across all of a consumer’s devices and are directly integrated with the consumer’s bank,” Visa says.

“Brazilian consumers are the first in the world to use the new Visa Cloud Token technology to make secure payments on WhatsApp.”

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