JPMorgan to Offer Meta Pay as Checkout Option

Meta has launched a partnership with J.P. Morgan Payments to offer Meta Pay as a checkout option for J.P. Morgan merchants.

In an announcement sent to PYMNTS Tuesday (Oct. 25), the company said this means J.P. Morgan Payments merchants can add Meta Pay — known as Facebook Pay until June — to their websites as a checkout option on both desktop and mobile.

“Meta’s partnership with J.P. Morgan Payments offers choice for customers and merchants, and further enables people to quickly, easily and securely pay for things on even more of their favorite websites, ultimately streamlining connections between people and businesses,” the announcement stated.

The news came one day after a major shareholder issued an open letter calling on Meta to slash its spending — and public focus — on the metaverse.

Altimeter Capital Management CEO Brad Gerstner, who holds 2.5 million shares in the social media and tech titan, warned that the company “has drifted into the land of excess — too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency” due to its focus on a metaverse that even it believes is at least 10 years and $100 billion away.

Gerstner said Meta should spend no more than $5 billion a year — down from the $10 billion to $15 billion pledged by CEO Mark Zuckerberg — and cut its workforce by 20%. He added that the public is “confused by what the metaverse even means. If the company were investing $1–2B per year into this project, then that confusion might not even be a problem.”

Earlier this month, reports emerged that Meta’s virtual reality, Horizon Worlds, was sputtering as its user base steadily dwindled, with just 9% of worlds built by creators receiving at least 50 people, and most receiving no visitors at all. This goes against what makes platforms of any kind attract users and scale, as PYMNTS Karen Webster wrote.

Read more: Meta’s Horizon Worlds Users Prefer Life in the Real World

“The reason people walk by an empty restaurant and walk into a busy one is the perception that the busy one is better,” Webster said. “Two-sided networks have a different challenge — which having built and launched one, Mark Zuckerberg should know. Without both sides on board, there is no platform. It’s Platform Economics 101, and it’s been that way since Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar was founded in 1730.”