TikTok is developing a peer-to-peer payments feature that would let users send each other money inside direct messages, according to code Bloomberg found in TikTok’s U.S. iPhone app. That’ll be perfect for your online girlfriend who’s kind of stressed out because her rent’s due.
The payments would run through TikTok Pay, which is a digital wallet and payment processor already available in Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand that people use to make purchases on TikTok Shop. TikTok also offers TikTok PayLater in some markets, which is their BNPL offering.
The code indicates that receivers can “tap to accept” payments sent to them before an expiration date hits, and senders can be notified about the status of transactions through push notifications or via their inbox. There’s also reportedly an option to attach a message with the payment such as “Love you baby! Can’t wait for us to finally meet in person and be together. Love, Your Big Bear.”
P2P payments on TikTok sounds good to me and makes perfect sense. People are already using TikTok to exchange cash value, though it happens via the purchase and transfer of virtual gifts, which can then be converted back into cash. As Morty Smith would say, “That just sounds like payments with extra steps.” Not to mention the insane amount of Internet begging that happens on the platform, with people posting their sad stories alongside their Venmo usernames. TikTok might as well make it official and transfer the cash directly. X is doing it.
Bloomberg notes that some of TikTok’s payment tools have been the center of lawsuits brought by state attorneys general who have claimed that the features led to sexual and financial exploitation of children, broken money transmission laws, and money laundering. However, to be fair, those problems have been happening on every payments platform since the dawn of the Internet, and there are solutions in place to mitigate them. If anything, bringing the money transfer in-house gives TikTok more controls to manage and prevent the problems, rather than just being an enabler of them. So I say, go for it.
A TikTok spokesperson told Bloomberg that the feature is not being tested in any market yet. I’ll let you know if/when it ever gets released.
