Sending and receiving money digitally will no longer be limited to online banking or your bank’s mobile app. In recent times we’re seeing how payments can be made using our phones and apps that aren’t limited to just banks. For example Facebook Messenger in the US supports sending payments to other users, and that feature could be coming to WhatsApp soon.
Earlier this year there was a report to suggest that WhatsApp could be getting a new mobile payments feature, and a recent report from WABetaInfo has revealed that the feature has been spotted in the latest version of the beta of the app on Android, which you can see in the screenshot to the right.
It does not seem like it is fully functional at the moment which means that we’re still not 100% sure what we can expect from it yet. However assuming it works the same as other mobile payment systems we’ve seen, it will probably be straightforward where users can attach a credit card or a bank account to their WhatsApp account, and money sent/received will be debited/credit from there.
Like we said, WhatsApp is definitely not the first messaging platform to support mobile payments, but if and when the feature does roll out and given how many users are on WhatsApp, it could be a pretty invaluable one.