How to send money to a friend with the Facebook app

Facebook is already a lot of things to a lot of people. It's a social network, sure, but also a tool for catologing memories, chatting with friends, and much more.

What isn't as well known yet is that Facebook would like to become a player in the peer-to-peer payment space, meaning that it wants to leverage its already massive network of users and have them start sending money to each other through its app. The service has been available in the Messenger app for a while, but now it's possible to either send or receive money starting in the Facebook app itself (with some caveats, which we'll get to shortly).

So how does one pull this off? Please allow us to explain.

Select the 'Find or Request Money' option from the main navigation

As TechCrunch explains, this option has magically appeared within the last few weeks. You'll find it near the bottom of your list of options, just above 'Feeds' and 'Apps.'

Download Messenger if necessary

Ever since Facebook spun out Messenger into its own app, there's been little arm-twisting necessary to get people to install it in order to continue chatting with their friends on mobile.

Still, if you've somehow resisted it so far, you'll need to download it and will be prompted by Facebook to do so to continue with your mobile payment.

Send a message to the person you want to send money to

Hopefully this step doesn't require further instruction, though Messenger has a pretty robust help section if it does. In the messaging interface, you'll see a small '$' icon inside a circle. Tap that and enter the amount of money you'd like to send. Then tap 'Pay' in the upper-right corner and enter your debit card information, as Facebook transfers only from one debit card to another.

Here's a short video to demonstrate the process:

The fine print

Sounds pretty great, right? Unless you don't trust Facebook with your banking data, but since people already trust Mark Zuckerberg's baby with lots of other stuff, this doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.

There are a few catches though, for now. The money transfer service is only available to U.S. Facebook users, though that is expected to change down the road. It's also not possible through the iPad version of Facebook or Messenger -- iPhone only for now. And since this is technically a form of bank transfer, there is the same delay of several business days that you'd expect.

Still, it's worth a look if you need to send some dough to a friend and want to cut out a middle man like PayPal. Check it out next time you are using the Facebook app and see for yourself.