海角大神

Facebook users in participating countries can now send money internationally from within the social media giant's Messenger application.

The London-based startup TransferWise on Tuesday launched a program on Facebook's chat platform that uses an artificially intelligent "chatbot" to process wire transfer requests from users. The newest feature, which expands Facebook鈥檚 existing domestic money transfer service,聽highlights the increasingly crowded landscape of digital payments and the tech company鈥檚 increasingly global goals.

鈥溌�... [and] our greatest challenges also need global responses,鈥� Facebook founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg wrote in an open letter last Thursday. 鈥淧rogress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.鈥澛�

Tuesday鈥檚 announcement has brought that vision one step closer, as the new integration enables Facebook users to send and receive money to friends and family between the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, and the European Union 鈥� all through the familiar Messenger program.

Chatbots are computer programs that are designed to engage in human-like conversations with users, much like Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, but in a text-based format. Facebook users can already order Domino's pizza via a Messenger-based chatbot. But TransferWise's automated program promises more complex levels of customer service, from completing wire transfer transactions to sending alerts when regularly used currencies hit favorable rates.

But, as anyone who has played with Siri or Alexa knows, conversational computing has not quite hit full stride with human conversations. And some聽digital banking analysts say the financial companies should be cautious in embracing the new technology. 聽

"If you are buying a pizza and don鈥檛 get exactly what you ordered or the chatbot didn鈥檛 understand the request, that鈥檚 not such a big deal," Aurelie L鈥橦ostis, an analyst at Forrester Research, told Bloomberg Tuesday. "But聽聽if the bot doesn鈥檛 understand the transaction well."

But Facebook and TransferWise are banking on the fact that technology 鈥� and the programmers behind it 鈥� will rise to the occasion and propel聽both companies to the forefront of a burgeoning field.

Transferwise, which is valued at more than $1 billion, currently sees a total of roughly $1 billion in transactions from more than 50 countries on its website each month. Hoping to adapt to work with other popular chat services, the company hopes the service would be ultimately extended to other countries, Scott Miller, head of TransferWise鈥檚 global partnerships, told Reuters.

Facebook's investment in chatbots underscores the social media giant鈥檚 vision of 鈥�a decentralized and personalized future鈥� that is built on artificial intelligence, as 海角大神 reported last week. With advancements in interacting ability, chatbots have become increasingly popular among enterprise technology in recent years, as they help businesses reduce customer service operation costs.

Facebook in April opened up its Messenger App to developers to create chatbots, hoping to expand its reach in customer service and enterprise transactions. Since then, digital payment companies and banks, such as Azimo 鈥� rival of TransferWise 鈥� Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, and China-based Alipay all have payment bots on Messenger.

These integrations are all part of Facebook's grand plan to make聽Messenger a聽multifaceted聽channel, amid a trend of consumers consolidating the number of apps they use. Analysts say such a move follows what pioneer WeChat has done in recent years, as the popular Chinese messaging service, which has , offers a chat-based payment system.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a to something else,鈥� Gartner research director Jessica Ekholm, told TechCrunch. 鈥淐onsumers are getting less interested in using applications.... People are spending more time with the apps that they鈥檝e already got."

This report includes material from Reuters.