• The social media giant will create a new group to look after its payments-related initiatives;
• After being suspended in Brazil, WhatsApp Pay had tests authorized by the country’s Central Bank.

Facebook named former PayPal Holdings executive Stephane Kasriel to lead Facebook Pay, a company executive said.

The social media giant will also create a new group to look after its payments-related initiatives, including Facebook Pay and WhatsApp Pay, David Marcus, co-creator of Facebook’s Libra cyrptocurrency project said in a tweet.

WhatsApp Pay was launched on June 15 in Brazil, the first market to test the novelty. The service, however, was suspended days later by the Central Bank and the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade).

READ ALSO: “Brazil’s Central Bank did not extrapolate role when suspending WhatsApp Pay,” says a director from the institution

Recently, the country’s financial authority authorized local institutions to test payments using WhatsApp. The feature would use Facebook Pay, the payments service WhatsApp owner Facebook launched last year, and which provides a way to make payments across the company’s apps.

At the time of launch, the service partners in Brazil were Banco do Brasil, Nubank, Sicredi, and Cielo, a card payment processor, as well as Visa and Mastercard.

Kasriel was also the former chief executive officer of freelance marketplace Upwork.