Instagram quietly launches a native payments feature for e-commerce purposes

It has been just a few days since Facebook’s annual developer conference F8 2018 has concluded, and already its photo-sharing service Instagram has started rolling out a new feature. [caption id=“attachment_4329423” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Instagram.[/caption] According to TechCrunch, an in-app payments feature has gone live on the photo-sharing app. Unlike WhatsApp, it is only for e-commerce purposes and not for peer to peer payments . However, as of now it is available only for a set of people in the US and is only in the beta stage. A spokesperson for Instagram has reportedly confirmed the development. To use this, the user has to register their credit or debit card details and a security PIN.  The feature is open for making bookings in restaurants and salons. For instance, Resy which is a dinner reservation app, has their clients using this native payments feature for booking through their Instagram page. In the future, it can be helpful for customers to contact the businesses directly. [caption id=“attachment_4455969” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Instagram payments feature asks for debit or credit card details of the user. TechCrunch.[/caption] The feature is unlike Shoppable photo tags, a feature which was tested in 2016. Here the user could check the prices of the products by tapping on the pictures. The user could press the ‘Shop Now’ button and be redirected to the website. With this feature, the user does not have to go out of the app which also ensures that people spend more time on Instagram. [caption id=“attachment_4455979” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Instagram will also feature a booking option. TechCrunch.[/caption] Facebook-owned Instagram could see a success in this feature since the social media platform is a photos only app. This could help in selling the products and therefore introduce an e-commerce side to it. Out of all the major products of Facebook, only WhatsApp has a payments feature (peer-to-peer). Facebook has a Marketplace feature where users can book or buy products but they would have to go out of the app.