Breaking: Meta Starts Crypto Payment Pilot on WhatsApp For US Customers

Meta, the newly rebranded Facebook is all set to introduce crypto payments through its social chatting app Whatsapp using the Novi cryptocurrency wallet. The social media giant has already begun the trials for the same.

NOVI chief Stephane Kasriel took to Twitter to reveal that the pilot program has been in progress for nearly six weeks, where a selected group of people have been testing the features and services of the Whatsapp payment.

There's a new way to try the @Novi digital wallet. Starting today, a limited number of people in the US will be able to send and receive money using Novi on @WhatsApp, making sending money to family and friends as easy as sending a message. 💸💬 pic.twitter.com/dGz3lejri7

— Stephane Kasriel (@skasriel) December 8, 2021

He said:

“Since we introduced the Novi pilot just six weeks ago, we’ve been able to test and learn which features and functionality are most important to people, and focus our efforts on making those even better.”

This will be the first major step taken by Meta towards expanding its digital wallet footprint after the rebranding. Facebook’s crypto aspirations began in 2019 when they announced their universal stablecoin project called Libra. However, the crypto venture failed to start as it ran into a number of regulatory hurdles and eventually had to shut down.

Facebook didn’t abandon its crypto plans and now aiming to make an impact in the nascent metaverse ecosystem with a rebranding. It has developed the Novi wallet on the side which would now play a key role in its payment plans.

Can Meta Make a Place for Itself?

Meta is considerably late to the crypto payment industry which it has been trying to enter for quite some time. However, this won’t be its first entry into the digital payment sector, as earlier, it has introduced a messenger payment sector briefly, but shut it down soon after it failed to take up.

The new crypto payment venture using Whatsapp could pave the way for Meta in the digital payment sector, given Whatsapp is one of the most popular social chatting services around the world with over a billion users.