Facebook Discontinues Messenger P2P Payments, DLT Based Payment System on Cards?

By Prashant Jha

Facebook has finally decided to discontinue its messenger P2P payment services which enabled the users based in the UK and France to send money to friends and family. The discontinuation of service is being seen as the move to bring in Distributed Ledger Technology based payment system for Facebook’s own stable coin called the Facebook coin.

The announcement came on the Facebook’s Help page on April 16th where it informed the users based in UK and France that the messenger peer-to-peer payment system will be discontinued from 15th June 2019.

The social media giant, however, maintained that even though the peer-to-peer payment system will be shut down, the users can still use the system to make other forms of payments for Facebook and charitable pages. The users would have the choice to change the payment option to their preferred service, while the uses based in the United States can continue using the services.

Facebook Started P2P Messenger Payment Services in 2016

Facebook acquired a regulatory license to avail its messenger payment services back in 2016, but the payment service never took off or gained any global appeal, thus the decision of discontinuing it is quite sensible. The timing is also quite suitable for the social media giants as they have already announced their plans of moving towards the digital currency in the form of their stable coin.

The company did not provide any reason behind the discontinuing its P2P payment services, but those who have been following the news would know that the decision is to push for its modern-day stable coin based decentralized payment services.

Recently, it was reported that Facebook is looking for venture capitalists who can invest up to $1 billion towards their ambitious crypto project. Apart from that Facebook has been heavily recruiting blockchain and DLT experts to help them create a well built stable coin which would not meet the same feat as their messenger P2P payment services.

The company has also acquired blockchain startup chainspace in a bid to leverage DLT skills to its staff. The Facebook stable coin is set to make debut in 6 months time and the company has already started to conduct meetings with various cryptocurrency exchanges.