Three of Facebook’s aspiring mobile payment partners in Indonesia held talks with the country’s central bank ahead of potentially applying for licences to launch services, Reuters reported.

In a comments made to the news publication, Bank Indonesia assistant governor Filianingsih Hendarta noted although a formal application had yet to be made by any party, three local companies had held initial discussions on Facebook collaborations with the regulator.

Parties said to be in the frame for providing mobile payments through the company’s social media platforms are: mobile payments company LinkAja, taxi booking app Gojek’s affiliate GoPay, and Grab-backed digital payments provider Ovo.

In August Reuters reported Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp was in talks with a number of potential partners in Indonesia, targeting the provision of cash transfer services through its service.

Mobile payments are an area regularly talked-up by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, though actual launches are sparse.

Facebook Pay launched in November in the US, providing online merchant and peer-to-peer (P2P) payments on its social media platforms with plans to expand onto other markets. In addition to the US, payments on Messenger had been available in the UK and France, though both were discontinued last year.

In February 2020, the company finally got the conditional go-ahead to provide P2P payments over WhatsApp in India, having had the project stuck in the pilot phase for almost two years.