More than 1 billion people use Facebook Messenger every month, the firm announced, reaching the milestone just three months after hitting 900 million monthly active users.

“We know that every message is important to you…  and our team is committed to building experiences you love and to making all the interactions in your life easier no matter who you are communicating with,” the tech giant said in a blog post.

Messenger is now at par with WhatsApp, also owned by Facebook, which reached the 1 billion user mark in February. WhatsApp also announced last month it handles more than 100 million voice calls every day.

Both are among the top ten all-time most-downloaded apps on the iOS App Store and Google’s Play Store, according to App Annie.

It is worth noting that Facebook removed the messaging feature in its core app to encourage users to download Messenger.

Last week, Facebook said it is testing “one-to-one secret conversations” for Messenger, which will be end-to-end encrypted and can only be read on one device.

In April it announced a host of new features for the app, becoming the latest high-profile convert to the bots cause.

Earlier this week, Absa unveiled ‘ChatBanking for Facebook Messenger’ in South Africa, which it claims is the first time customers can access their banking services using the service.