Facebook Launches Simple Mobile Payments

Post by Gustomaximus » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 4:01 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #26

jonknee wrote: post #25

> The goal is to make it much easier to pay for in-app purchases. It is well known that the more steps users have to go through to verify payment information on a mobile device, the more likely they are to abandon that purchase halfway through the process. I wonder how Apple will react to that. They're pretty keen on banning apps that don't give them 30% of in app purchases. If Apple doesn't reject this they will hav…

Policies like that dissolve on this scale. It's not like some random auditor in a cubicle in the app store division pulls up the next app to review in their queue (hm... next is "Facebook"...) and rejects it because it has a payment option that doesn't go through Apple's process. What happens is that Mark calls Tim, their people meet, and a bunch of lawyers write up a contract that the rest of us will never see.

Post by taligent » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 4:18 AM UTC

uptown wrote: post #13

My biggest barrier to ever using something like this is trust. Facebook has screwed with privacy policies, and over-complicated application data-sharing settings so many times that I can't imagine funneling money through their platform. While I trust them with some of my personal information which has value, there's just no trust there for me when it comes to actual money. Psychologically, they rank below Paypal in m…

Post by ashishgandhi » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 4:21 AM UTC

adventureful wrote: post #32

I've seen FB payments hyped to the moon lately as a revenue solution to Facebook's advertising 'problems' - my two cents are that Facebook is going to completely flop at mobile payments. I don't think they can execute the product properly, from either a point of purchase proposition or from an easy-to-use perspective. PayPal struggles with complexity, and I believe Facebook's offering will not only be more confusing…

Post by taligent » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 4:28 AM UTC

TomGullen wrote: post #2

Can someone explain to me why FB chose to use credits over just actual money balances? Is it psychologically designed to get people more willing to fritter them in the same way it's easier to blow chips in a casino than real cash? Is it a way to funnel multiple currencies into one global currency? It just seems like an extra unnecessary convoluted layer to me. Having a credit balance over real money balance is unnerv…

Post by wmf » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 5:19 AM UTC

gzp wrote: post #16

spaghetti wrote: post #12

I'm curious about Square's reaction to this. It seems like people could literally start paying with Facebook at restaurants and bars. Now the charges are just part of the monthly phone bill instead of a monthly credit card bill. For that matter I wonder what implications this could have for credit card companies. Anyone know if, say, AT&T pays the same charge for accepting credit cards as small merchants?

What FB is offering here is carrier billing. Short term, paying with FB for physical goods (eg. in restaurants, bars) is an unlikely outcome because carrier billing involves giving up an enormous percentage of the transaction to the carriers. In the U.S., carrier billing typically involves yielding a 40 - 50% margin to the carriers. In Europe, the percentages are lower -- carrier billing is a more mature market there…