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Facebook Messenger Hack Discovers Friend-To-Friend Payments

A new feature buried in the code of Facebook's Messenger app would allow users to send money to each other as easily as sending a selfie.
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It looks like it won't be long before Emojis and selfies aren't the only thing being sent over Facebook Messenger. Users might soon be able to send money to friends over the app as well.

News that code existed within Facebook Messenger to allow payments was first revealed last month by a security researcher

But a Stanford University student dug deeper into the app so he could turn the feature on and see what it looks like in action.

This video shows how the process works. Users can send each other payments using a debit card — no credit cards or bank accounts yet. It's as simple as sending a picture. All it needs is a PIN assigned to the phone. 

As of right now it looks like there is no service charge to send money over the app, but The Vergesays that could be added on eventually, because the final product hasn't even launched yet.

It now makes a lot more sense that Facebook hired former Paypal president David Marcus to lead it's messaging efforts.  

Although, Mark Zuckerberg hasn't exactly hid his ambitions to add a payment feature — just held firm it wouldn't happen overnight. 

TechCrunch writes there's a lot of competition to become the dominating messaging app going on right now. With Facebook being the first to add a unique feature like this one, it could put the company ahead of the competition. 

Facebook has yet to comment on the story. 

This video includes images from Karlis Dambrans / CC BY 2.0 and Getty Images.