Facebook Messenger Hack Reveals Mobile Payments Service

Image: Jason Alden, Bloomberg

Not content to manage the news updates and friend connections of its over one billion users, the long arm of Facebook is now reportedly preparing to enter the world of mobile payments.

According to a report from Techcrunch, Andrew Aude, a student developer at Stanford, discovered the as yet unreleased feature of Facebook Messenger by using the iOS and Mac OS X hacking tool Cycript.

Posting the find on Twitter on Saturday, including screenshots, Aude claims the dynamic would allow Facebook Messenger users to pay in the same users of Square's Cash app allows users to send money with their debit card via their mobile phone.

@Facebook Messenger has P2P payments coming. @SquareCash style. http://ift.tt/1pT61YM

- Andrew Aude (@andyplace2) October 4, 2014

The integration of payments into Facebook's messaging app is something that has been widely anticipated following the company's hiring of former PayPal president David Marcus back in June.

While testing, Aude was reportedly only able to get debit cards to work with the system, banks accounts and credit cards did not work. 'Based on my understanding of the debit interchange rates, each transaction will cost Facebook roughly $0.40 to $0.50 (Durbin swipe fee + ACH fee),' Aude told the site. 'The app didn't mention a fee to send, so it's probably free, at least initially. Over time they might add a $1 fee.'

Aude, who says he believes the feature might be rolled out in the next few months, also found another note in the code that indicates the feature will initially only allow one-to-one transactions. 'In the short term, we will only support single payment attachment,' reads the note in the code discovered by Aude. 'Multiple payment attachments will be supported in the future.'

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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