ITA / ENG

News

21 Maggio 2019

Paying with whatsapp is now possible in London

"Zuckerberg has come"; as it said a TV series that came to end this week. After the announcement at the end of 2018 of the entrance of the Sillicon Valley's big names in the fintech world, Facebook’s leader launched his first offensive. The chosen battlefield, despite Brexit, is London, which has always been considered the center of excellence for fintech. In the English capital, it will be soon possible to pay with WhatsApp. The features are not completely new. Facebook has been testing them for a long time on a million users in India.

Among those who tried it, the feedback was positive in the face of intense use. It’s simple, immediate and above all it has already millions of loyal users. These are all signs proving that there are many people interested in using the most famous chat in the world also to make payments.

Zuckerberg himself said: "I am convinced that sending money should be as simple as sending a photo." The social network payments game could put WhatsApp back in the game to compete with the myriad of other money transfer apps, and considering its numbers, it could find very little resistance.

Only regarding Italy, Facebook has 31 million users and our country is one of those in which the Whatsapp service is most used. To give an example, Banca Intesa, the largest Italian banking group, has 11.1 million customers and none of these use the bank app 5-10 times a day as an average Facebook user.