If you’re the kind of person who’s always forgetting who you owe for dinner, cab rides, or coffee, Facebook Messenger is testing a new feature that will gently nag you into paying your pals back.
The new “chat assist” feature uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to read the text of your messages. If it finds something that indicates money owed, like the phrase “IOU” or something “you owe me $27 for that cheese” will trigger Messenger to add a payment button for that amount below the message, TechCrunch reports.
You can then decide whether or not to click and send the money from a debit card number you’ve previously connected to Messenger.
Facebook also introduced a new polls feature for Messenger so friends can make decisions together, for example: which cheese to buy at the cheese castle.
“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,” Facebook told TechCrunch.
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist