Meta eyes Instagram payments as gateway to metaverse

Meta, the parent company to Facebook and Instagram, announced the launch of its cross-platform payments system, Meta Pay, on Instagram chat. Meta said that 1 billion users message a business on one of its apps every week.

Why should we care?
This launch comes two months after Meta rebranded Facebook Pay as Meta Pay, which, according to Meta’s Head of Fintech, Stephane Kasriel, was an effort to highlight interoperability across Meta-owned platforms as well as signal the company’s investment in the metaverse. “Designing products and infrastructure with the metaverse in mind today will help facilitate innovation that delivers greater access and real cost savings—before the metaverse even becomes mainstream,” Kasriel said at the time. “Now is the time to lay down the building blocks for the future. Because once that foundation is in place, the potential of the metaverse, and where it can take fintech next, will be limitless.” The launch of Meta Pay on Instagram seems like a two-pronged effort. One, to increase revenue for Meta through Instagram, which has taken a hit since ad-revenue streams have slowed. And two, to prepare Instagram’s more than 1 billion users for the metaverse. By having consumers get used to paying for goods and services with (largely) faceless businesses—especially if these online transactional experiences are positive ones—Meta seems to think consumers will be more likely to trust and conduct similar commercial practices with metaverse-based avatars. And, even if the metaverse doesn’t pay off for Meta, the company can double down on Meta Pay to drive financial flows through its more established platforms. (Whether it would rebrand itself once more is uncertain.)