Facebook discontinues P2P payments via Messenger in Europe
- Tuesday, April 16th, 2019
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Facebook has decided its time to give up on providing peer-to-peer (P2P) money transfers through Messenger across Europe, announcing it will be ending the service in the UK and France.
P2P money transfers launched in the UK and France in November 2017, marking the first time the feature had been launched outside the US, where it launched in 2015. Despite this, Facebook never made it to any other European countries. Now, both will be discontinued in June.
“On 15 June 2019, we will discontinue P2P services on Messenger or through Facebook messages for all residents in the UK and France,” said Facebook on the help page for the feature. “While you wont be able to exchange money with friends and family, youll still be able to complete other transactions through Facebook, such as making donations to charitable organisations.”
One of the big stumbling blocks for the feature is that it only enables users to send money to people who reside in the same country as them and it’s likely this is one of the reasons it never really caught on. In Q4 2018, Europe accounted for $64m of $274m in ‘payments & other fees revenue’ reported by Facebook.
Though Facebook is killing its P2P payment dreams in Europe, it’ll continue to let users make donations to charity via its main platform.