Stan Chudnovsky, head of product for messaging at Facebook, said Australian companies are the biggest users of Messenger globally.

Mr Chudnovsky, who is based in San Francisco, is visiting Australia with a team to discuss Messenger with local businesses, users and developers.

"We're trying to figure out what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong and what we can do better," he said during a visit to Sydney on Friday.

"There's a very high penetration of Messenger in Australia.

"From a mind set perspective, you guys seem to be living in the future."

Australians are big users of smartphones: local smartphone ownership jumped about 38 per cent to 15.3 million in mid-2015 from 11.1 million in 2013, according to IAB Australia, a trade association for online advertising in Australia.

National broadcaster ABC and Australia's biggest airline Qantas are two examples of local businesses using Messenger to reach consumers directly.

Mr Chudnovsky met with Qantas executives on Thursday.

ABC started using Messenger to deliver news during last year's federal election to offer a morning news summary message, with options for users to subscribe to different news categories.

About 3.4 million people have now "liked" the service.

Qantas launched Qantas Concierge, a Messenger "bot" or automated software that gives customers personalised travel information, in February.

Qantas said Concierge would become another support channel for customers, complementing call centres and social media teams.

About 1.2 billion people use Messenger each month, plus 60 million business pages on Facebook - of which 20 million are active on Messenger, Mr Chudnovsky said.

AAP