Facebook has rolled out a new service in India that allows users to recharge their prepaid mobile connections. Even though it is not the big splash that was being anticipated by various media outlets this Facebook's first step into the digital payments ecosystem in India. The service is currently limited to the Facebook app on Android. The mobile recharges can only be paid for via a credit or debit card only at the moment. The recharge service seems to be in testing phase and is only available to some users. This is not the company's first foray into payments in India, WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook launched its UPI powered payments service in February this year. By the virtue of being powered by UPI WhatsApp allows direct peer to peer payments between users' bank accounts. Facebook has reportedly been testing its own peer-to-peer payments system for its messenger app but there are conflicting reports on whether the feature will see a release in India. Mobile recharges might seem like a small starting point but as Freecharge, Mobikwik, Paytm, Phonepe and many other digital payment platforms have shown it is possible to scale up your payments infrastructure from there. While the fact that it would be offering a very similar product across two of its own apps which might sound like a bad idea, there is a precedent here too. The company recently integrated Snapchat-style stories across all its platforms, that is Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. But will the social…
