PayPal Deeper Integration With Facebook Messenger

Facebook’s chatbots are getting an upgrade – care of PayPal.

The digital payments platform will now be one of the payment option within messenger – meaning that customers who shop via chatbot will be able to complete transactions via PayPal. Going forward it will also be easier for user to connect their Facebook and Messenger accounts with their PayPal accounts

PayPal’s integration with Messenger had been previously announced – but Facebook has been cautious in its rollout of Messenger payments and says it will roll out this latest upgrade in full by the end of 2016. Consumers who do not elect to use PayPal can also use payments credentials stored within Facebook/Messenger within their bots. In addition Stripe, Visa, Matercard and American Express have also been working with Facebook of late to expand the social network’s commerce capabilities vis a vis payments.

But PayPal and Messenger – given the sizable overlap of their audiences – could potentially be a potent combination. PayPal gains access to Facebook’s billion user a day membership or mobile messaging platform that claims some 40 percent to of mobile users – Facebook gets to add the best known digital payments firm to their roster and its 192 million users worldwide.

ayPal and Messenger’s forthcoming integrations are U.S.-focused for the time being – though global expansion remains on the visible horizon.  PayPal says the integrations are “starting” in the U.S. – implying they won’t be ending here.  Though when exactly, or even vaguely, users overseas can expect to see a PayPal/Messenger tie-in remains to be announced.

The Messenger integrations are beginning to roll out now in the U.S., PayPal says, however.

Facebook and PayPal have partnered on other payment initiatives in the past, and Facebook has been quite adamant that it is not interested in building a payments business – past what it needs to support its total social commerce ambitions.  That is a fairly vague guideline – particularly give Facebook’s expanding scope and scale.