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Facebook Messenger adding polling, payment features

Could even more features be on the way?

 

April Siese

Tech

Posted on Sep 23, 2016   Updated on May 25, 2021, 10:44 pm CDT

Facebook is rolling out even more features to its Messenger app. In a post on Thursday, the company stated that polls have been made available to U.S. users.

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Simply tap the bar graph icon in the middle of the app and you can make a poll for anything your heart desires, including what to have for dinner with your friends. Looks like sushi is owning pizza in Facebook’s example.

According to TechCrunch, another feature is gracing the smartphone screens of some users. Dubbed “chat assist,” the service utilizes phrases like “IOU” and “you owe me” to generate a payment prompt, which then directs users to enter their card info and send what’s owed.

Facebook launched a user-to-user payment system last year and has only recently opened up the service to chat bots for the sake of purchasing items from vendors via the app.

“We look at this chat assist function with polls and payments as just another example of offering help to make Messenger users’ lives easier—like offering a ride with Uber, for example,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.

It’s unclear if and when these messenger services will be available to international customers. For now, they’ll just have to settle for other apps instead of an all-encompassing Facebook message.

H/T Tech Crunch

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*First Published: Sep 23, 2016, 10:10 pm CDT