According to Nedbank’s statement, the solution will enable business owners to send an invoice requesting a payment from any customer seamlessly through WhatsApp. The customers in turn can quickly settle a payment directly from the platform.

‘The need for a diverse range of contactless payment methods is more important today than we could have possibly imagined, as we seek to rebuild the economy by giving businesses the ability to transact in a safe and secure way,’ says Chipo Mushwana, Executive: Emerging Payments at Nedbank.

Anyone with a valid South African identity document and South African bank account can make use of Money Message. Business owners, or Merchants as the bank likes to call them, will need to first register for the service, which is completed within a matter of minutes, and afterwards, they can immediately initiate a payment request.

In the same breath, Nedbank admits that while other institutions have released banking functionality that works through WhatsApp, Money Message is unique in that it has been specifically developed to process payments for merchants and small businesses. Rather than a banking plug-in.

A beta version of Money Message has been available to a small selection of micro merchants for just over a month and will gradually reach the broader market during the rest of the year. However, business owners can register through the appropriate channels.

Messaging apps have largely replaced texting and email as the primary way people communicate in the modern world. WhatsApp is the dominant messaging app used in many countries, making it important to offer various security options tailored to the needs of users.

The fingerprint lock option is exactly what it sounds like — the ability to lock the app and require the user’s fingerprint to unlock it. This feature is available now to Android users who have an Android device with a built-in fingerprint sensor.

To set up the new feature, you’ll need to open WhatsApp and enter the Settings menu. From there, tap Account -> Privacy -> Fingerprint lock. Toggle on the “Unlock with fingerprint” setting, then touch the fingerprint sensor to confirm the selection. You’ll need to have at least one fingerprint registered with your device in order to use the feature.

There’s a distinct advantage to securing an app using a fingerprint instead of a password or PIN, namely that it cannot be guessed, and the phone cannot be accessed without its owner physically touching it. Users should keep in mind that some laws do not protect device owners from being forced by law enforcement to unlock a device that is secured with a fingerprint, however.

WhatsApp, which sees over 465 million active users per month has confirmed those on Android and iOS will get the feature first when it rolls out in the second quarter of 2014. We’re not completely sure on how it will work, but be sure to expect something like Skype or Viber. Your data plan will cough up for those calls

WhatsApp is a voice and text instant messaging platform with apps for most every smartphone OS. It provides free service for the first year and costs a dollar annually after that. Why then, did Facebook just buy WhatsApp — aside from the obvious cachet, keeping it away from Google and free advertising that comes with its omnipresence in Katy Perry’s Roar video — for $19 billion (with a ‘b’), when it already has Facebook Messenger?

In a word: users. 450 million of them to be precise, and 315 million of those are active on a given day. In fact, WhatsApp’s users are so prolific, its messaging volume is roughly equal to that of the entire world’s SMS traffic. And, WhatsApp is huge overseas and in emerging markets. According to a report from mobile marketing and research firm Jana, the app is far and away the most used messaging service in India, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa. The Information, which got a more in depth look at Jana’s research, shows that Facebook Messenger usage is far, far lower in those same countries.

Now, is that massive international user base worth $19 billion? It’s hard for us to understand how it possibly could be. WhatsApp’s founders have pledged to keep the app ad- and gimmick-free, so there aren’t any indications that new revenue streams are coming. And, while the acquisition fits in perfectly with Facebook’s plan to expand its app offerings, the social network has promised to use the same hands-off approach it did with Instagram — leveraging its “expertise, resources and scale” to grow the platform, while keeping WhatsApp operationally independent.

Additional Reporting from Engadget