Facebook wants to know your financial information so it can share it with you on Messenger

A new report from The Wall Street Journal shows that Facebook has actively been seeking out conversations with some of the major banking institutions. These include JP Morgan, Chase, and Wells Fargo.

As Facebook continues to define itself as something more than a social platform, it makes sense that it would look towards financial as it continues to offer more ways for users exchange money and to buy things from the platform. After the news broke from the WSJ report, Facebook stocks jumped up about 2.5%.

In a statement to CNBC, a Facebook spokesperson said,

Like many online companies, we routinely talk to financial institutions about how we can improve people’s commerce experiences, like enabling better customer service. An essential part of these efforts is keeping people’s information safe and secure. We don’t use purchase data from banks or credit card companies for ads.

Basically, the talks revolve around using the Facebook Messenger service to monitor your bank accounts for things like balances and recent transactions – keeping you in Facebook’s sphere and away from the big, scary internet.

This all comes at a strange time for Facebook. Users around the globe are suspicious of not only the content being put on the site, but Facebook as a corporation, as well. It’s tough to decide where to stand. For one, you have the seemingly always present issues with elections, but then you have privacy concerns that are being counterweighted with news of new dating features.

It’s tough to figure out who and what to root for, but I have a feeling the only people losing will be us.

What do you think – would you keep your financial information tied to your FB account? Let us know below.

For more tech and gaming news, make sure to check out:

• Imagine that, Alex Jones has now been removed from iTunes
• Apple might be worth $1 trillion but the company is tired of giving away $9 dongles
• MoviePass continues to scramble, cuts to three movies a month and ends peak pricing

Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.