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Facebook introduced person-to-person payments within Messenger <\/a>in\u00a0early 2015, but today the company announced the feature is expanding to support groups, as well. The payments feature essentially works the same in group chats as in private ones, but now allows\u00a0users to pay either everyone in the group or individual members through a click of the payments icon (the dollar sign).<\/p>\n The payments icon can be selected after first clicking on the plus sign in the bottom left hand side of the group conversation. This is where the other, lesser-used features like games, location-sharing, ride requests, and more are tucked away in a new, scrollable user interface that arrived alongside Facebook\u2019s debut of its Messenger assistant, M, earlier this month.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Facebook suggests the new\u00a0feature would be useful for groups where everyone is chipping in on\u00a0a purchase \u2013 like a group gift \u2013 or are\u00a0splitting a restaurant bill. These are areas where people today still tend to turn to standalone payment services, like PayPal, Venmo, or Square Cash.<\/p>\n In addition to sending payments to other group members, you can also request payments from the group right within your chat.<\/p>\n To do so, you enter the amount you want to request per person or the total sum to be divided evenly through the group, either including yourself in that calculation or not, Facebook says. You can also\u00a0add a note about what the money is for (e.g. \u201cpizza party\u201d) then hit \u201cRequest\u201d to send it out the group conversation.<\/p>\n A message will appear in the group chat to show who has paid. Those details are\u00a0available by viewing the Request Details in full-screen, too.<\/p>\n The service is free to use and does not require a password, Facebook notes.<\/p>\n Payments is an area of Facebook\u2019s business that hasn\u2019t received as much focus over the years, despite the social network\u2019s\u00a0potential to collect and store payment data for its sizable user base \u2013 information that could\u00a0then be used in other areas across Facebook\u00a0\u2013 like gaming or e-commerce, for example.<\/p>\n But Facebook has been hesitant to fully acknowledge its ambitions with payments, having said in the past<\/a> with the launch of Messenger payments that it was \u201cnot building a payments business.\u201d Instead, the goal was to simply make Messenger itself more useful, and therefore, more competitive with rivals, it had indicated.<\/p>\n However, payments is a critical feature for today\u2019s messaging apps. Facebook Messenger competitors \u2013 like Snapchat<\/a> and China\u2019s WeChat<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 already support in-app payments, and Kik this month detailed\u00a0its intentions to add payments to its own app<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/5f3c3_01_w-phone.png?resize=333%2C680&ssl=1\")
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