Third-party apps likely coming to Facebook’s Messenger

Third-party apps likely coming to Facebook’s Messenger

Messenger will be opened up to 20 third party services to start.

Facebook’s Messenger App has been through some major changes recently, and even more look to be in store for it in the near future. Rumors are swirling that at next week’s F8 developer conference, Facebook will announce that it will open up Messenger to third party apps.

According to TechCrunch, multiple sources have confirmed the coming announcement. These sources say that Facebook will initially focus on enabling third parties to develop mechanisms for content and information to travel through Messenger. If these initial forays are successful, Facebook may then add even more utilities to Messenger.

Sources familiar with Facebook’s plans have also told Mashable that the social network will open up Messenger to 20 third-party services to start. While we know that these third party apps will work on top of Messenger, sources remain mum on who the early partners are or what the integration will look like exactly. It does seem likely that Facebook will open up the platform to more developers after the initial launch.

This major announcement comes only a few days after Facebook began the long-awaited roll out of its Messenger payments service. As part of that roll out, in the next few months, Facebook users who add their debit card information to Messenger’s settings section will be able to send payments to friends. The feature works by selecting the “$” icon during a chat. Mashable reports that the icon that will appear in the row above the software keyboard. Users then just need to  click “Pay” to complete the process.

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