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Photo sharing application Instagram has rolled out a native payments feature for some of its users. It lets you register a debit or credit card as part of a profile, set up a security pin and then allows you to start buying things without logging out. 

Instagram never mentioned about native payments since it was launched, but now it has quietly rolled out this feature to make payments directly from the app. You can expect direct payments for things like movie tickets through the app. A tap through to the terms of service reveals that Instagram Payments are backed by Facebook?s Payments rules. The payment feature appears under ?Settings? inside the app, with an option to add debit or credit card information, and track previous payments. 

As of now it is available only for a set of people in the US and is only in the beta stage. Out of all the major products of Facebook, only WhatsApp has a payments feature (peer-to-peer). Facebook has a Marketplace feature where users can book or buy products but they would have to go out of the app. 

With its polished pictures and plethora of brands, shopping through Instagram could prove popular and give businesses a big new reason to advertise on the app. If they can get higher conversion rates because people don?t quit in the middle of checkout as the fill in their payment info, brands might prefer to push people to buy via Instagram. 

Earlier, Facebook started dabbling in native commerce around 2013, and eventually started rolling out peer-to-peer payments through Messenger. In 2016, Instagram tested the ?Shoppable Tags? to let you see which products were in a post and tap through to buy them on the brand?s site, it?s possible that the payments option will work with Instagram?s ?Shoppable Tags.?

Facebook-owned Instagram could see a success in this feature since the social media platform is a photos only app. This could help in selling the products and therefore introduce an e-commerce side to it. 

Instagram isn?t the only one who sees this potential. Snapchat started testing its own native payments and checkout feature in February.   

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