Instagram testing a booking & payments feature it first announced more than a year ago

For now, the fea­ture is avail­able to a lim­it­ed set of part­ners and busi­ness­es on Insta­gram.

Insta­gram has start­ed test­ing a new book­ing and pay­ments fea­ture that lets users book ser­vices and make direct pay­ments to busi­ness­es direct­ly from the app. Right now, the fea­ture is only avail­able to a lim­it­ed num­ber of part­ners and busi­ness­es on Insta­gram — one being Resy, an online reser­va­tion app for restaurants.

The social plat­form first announced it would be rolling out the fea­ture last March. At the time, Insta­gram said it was work­ing on a way for users to book ser­vices via a company’s busi­ness pro­file on the app — but now that the fea­ture is live, tests show it also includes a pay­ment option.

Users can reg­is­ter a deb­it or cred­it card through their Insta­gram pro­file and set up a secu­ri­ty code with it, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to send pay­ments with­out ever leav­ing the app, accord­ing to TechCrunch. Insta­gram told TechCrunch it has plans to expand the pay­ment option to items like movie tickets.

Insta­gram has grad­u­al­ly been work­ing on more com­merce options for brands on the plat­form. Last month, it extend­ed its shop­pable organ­ic posts to eight more coun­tries. Launched in the US last year, Instagram’s shop­pable organ­ic posts allow busi­ness­es to aug­ment prod­uct pho­tos with pur­chas­ing infor­ma­tion and links point­ing to buy­ing options on the business’s site.

This new fea­ture is a dif­fer­ent beast, as it is attached to a company’s busi­ness pro­file on Insta­gram — offer­ing a rev­enue-dri­ving oppor­tu­ni­ty direct­ly with­in the app.

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