Facebook Messenger Now Enables Payments in its Chat Bots

Facebook announced yesterday that its Messenger bots can now accept payments natively without sending users to an external website. The credit card info people already have stored in Facebook or Messenger can be used to instantly make purchases in bots that are part of the new closed beta the developers can apply for.

Total Retail's Take: What this news means for retailers is that they will now be able to sell their products on a platform, Facebook's Messenger app, where their customers are already spending a large portion of their time — and without having to send them to an external site for completion of the checkout process. Enabling commerce whenever, wherever and however consumers choose to engage with brands is the name of the game today. Let's see what innovative companies take advantage of this new opportunity to make chat bots the next big sales-generating channel.