Facebook could allow you to send money to your friends soon

With the number of digital transactions around the world increasing by the day, Facebook is also looking to improve users’ payment experience on its platform. Making a move in the same direction, the company may soon start testing ”red envelope” payments feature that will allow users to send money to others on the platform.

According to Matt Navarra, the director of social media at The Next Web, who tweeted screenshots of the feature, the "red envelope" feature will enable users send money to others and the "breaking news" tag can be used by publishers to create awareness regarding latest happenings among the users.

According to the report, Facebook confirmed that the "breaking news" tag was meant for a future test but there are no further details regarding it. Also, the company has not revealed anything about the "red envelope" feature. The report quotes a Facebook representative stating, "Facebook is always testing new product experiences but there's nothing specific to talk about at this time."

Some users pointed out that the feature is similar to WeChat‘s which has made a success out of an integrated payments and social messaging service. Red envelopes are typically used for gift giving, especially for holidays like Chinese New Year, but the ability to gift someone money on Facebook would mean Facebook could also facilitate peer-to-peer payments.

Additionally, Facebook will support the subscription-based news product in Instant Articles for both metered models (starting with a uniform meter at 10 articles) and “freemium” models (the publisher controls which articles are locked).

If Facebook rolls out the Red Envelope feature widely, it could render Messenger Payments redundant. But the Silicon Valley giant isn’t bothered by repetitive features, given how it refuses to give up on Facebook Stories (a replica of Instagram Stories) that has been termed a disaster. And payments is one share of the consumer wallet that Facebook would be keen to grab, as digital spending soars across the world. With WhatsApp Pay around the corner, the digital payments space is surely up for some disruption.