Facebook Ends Messenger Peer-to-Peer Payments in UK and France
Facebook is discontinuing its Messenger peer-to-peer payment service in the UK and France on June 15 due to low usage. The company continues to operate the feature in the US and still allows charitable donations in Europe.
Facebook discontinues its peer-to-peer payment service in Messenger for residents of the UK and France on June 15. The company states that it makes this change to focus on features that users find most useful, implying that the money transfer tool sees low adoption in these European markets.
The shutdown only affects personal money transfers between friends and family in those two specific countries. Users still maintain the ability to make charitable donations through Facebook, and the peer-to-peer payment feature remains fully active in the United States.
Facebook originally launched this European payments feature in late 2017 to compete with services like PayPal in the growing social remittance market. Despite holding the necessary money transmitter licenses, the tech giant ultimately decides to pull back its ambitions for personal P2P financial transactions in this region.