One of the world’s largest mobile messaging services is launching a new feature enabling its users to send and receive crypto assets.
American platform WhatsApp just announced a new pilot program that integrates Novi, the digital wallet developed by leading social media platform Facebook, now Meta. US-based WhatsApp users will now be able to exchange digital currencies without having to switch over to another app.
Head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart says in a tweet,
“New in the US: use your Novi digital wallet to send and receive money right within a WhatsApp chat.
People use [WhatsApp] to coordinate sending money to loved ones, and now Novi will help them do that securely, instantly and with no fees.”
Back in October, Novi first announced a limited rollout involving the Paxos Dollar (USDP) stablecoin, which is secured by the COINBASE Custody Trust Company.
Now Novi’s head Stephane Kasriel says it’s time to take the next step forward.
In a series of tweets he explains,
“Since we introduced the Novi pilot just six weeks ago, we’ve been able to test and learn which features and functionality are most important to people and focus our efforts on making those even better.
We’re still very early in the Novi pilot journey, so we made the decision to test this new entry point in one country to start and will look to extend it once we’ve heard from people what they think of this new experience.
Using Novi doesn’t change the privacy of WhatsApp personal messages and calls, which are always end-to-end encrypted.”
The Novi website says that WhatsApp users can send money as simply as they would send a message, all while still remaining in the chat.
Currently, it’s free to both send and receive funds using Novi on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is owned by Meta and is estimated to have over two billion users worldwide.
