Instagram Announces New Feature To Collect “Payments In Chat”

Instagram is launching a new feature called “Payments in Chat”, though the name undersells the actual capabilities of the feature.

As announced via Meta’s Newsroom, the Payments in Chat feature will allow online businesses to collect payments directly from customers through the chat tool. But, more than that, the tool will enable companies to completely handle the sales process through chat – including answering customers’ questions, creating new purchase orders, managing payments, and even tracking product shipments.

As the announcement explains:

“We want to help people start conversations with businesses they care about and help them find and buy products they love in an easy, seamless experience, right from the chat thread.”

How It Works

To make Payments in Chat possible, the new feature uses Meta Pay – the company’s first-party payment processing service. This keeps the process streamlined, allowing shoppers to make purchases in just a few taps while providing secure data transmission and purchase protection.

Using this service, customers are able to initiate a chat with a company representative to ask questions about a potential purchase, checkout, pay for the purchase, and track its shipment to your home without ever leaving Instagram’s chat.

When combined with Instagram Shops, the new Payment in Chat feature makes it possible for shoppers to go from discovering a new product to buying it with just a few taps or without the need to ever leave the platform.