Facebook could charge UK users over £10 to message people who are not within their social sphere, including celebrities.
The site is likely to charge between 70p and £10 per message to those who aren't "friends", with the premium price of about £10 reserved for contacting celebrities, according to Sky News.
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Facebook recently changed its policy to put messages to strangers into an "other" folder, instead of their inbox. Under the payment scheme, a user will be able to pay to have their message appear in the stranger's inbox.
The message to a celebrity or public figure will be charged depending on their fame and popularity. Fans of Olympic diver Tom Daley could be charged £10.68 per message, while £10.08 could be spent on contacting author Salman Rushie, claimed the Sunday Times.
Facebook claims the scheme, which is already being tested in the US, will prevent spam being sent to users.
"The system of paying to message non-friends in their Facebook inbox is designed to prevent spam, while acknowledging that sometimes you might want to hear from people outside your immediate social circle," said a Facebook spokesperson.
"We are testing a number of price points in the UK and other countries to establish the optimal fee that signals importance. Part of that test involves charging higher amounts for public figures, based on the number of followers they have."
A test to allow users to contact high-profile celebrities including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for $100 (£65) had been called off earlier this year, while in December last year the website tested a scheme to enable over 18s to send messages to a stranger's inbox along with an automatic alert to increase the likeliness of the receiver reading the message.
Facebook has been looking at ways to increase revenue after it lost more than half of its market capitalisation following its May 2012 IPO, when it was valued at $100bn.
Investors have become unsure of its advertising model as more people use smartphones and tablets instead of laptop and desktop PCs. But this new element of charging users could feed into a longer-term vision for the company to get users comfortable with the idea of paying for smaller features on Facebook, before introducing charges for more significant features in the future.
Last week, the social network announced ‘Facebook Home', an Android app that extensively re-skins the Android user interface on the HTC First phone.
