Facebook has announced a new service that will be available for the Messenger app
Facebook is making its first official entry into the mobile payments space. The social media company has announced that it will soon allow users of its Messenger application to send and receive money. The service will be free, but will see a limited initial launch in some parts of the United States. The launch will be taking place over the next few months, eventually be made available to all Messenger users in the country.
New service will allow users to send and receive money over Messenger
Facebook has partnered with Visa and MasterCard in order to make the service available. Those with Visa or MasterCard cards, as well as those with debit cards from a U.S. bank, will be able to transfer money through the new service. The service will be accessed through a “$” icon that will be added to the Messenger app in the near future. Once this icon is tapped, users will be able to note the amount of money they can send to their friends. All those using the service will have to link their financial information to the Messenger app.
Consumer information will be stored in a secure environment
For security purposes, users will have to use a PIN number to authorize money transfers. The company notes that all financial information will be kept in a secure environment that is entirely separate from other parts of Facebook. The service will also be monitored by fraud prevention specialists, who will analyze the service to determine whether or not suspicious activity is present among users.
Facebook will face competition from other companies entering the mobile payments space
Facebook has been showing strong interest in mobile payments for some time. The company sees a great deal of promise in this sector, largely due to the number of consumers that spend money online over their mobile devices. Facebook will be competing with other companies involves in mobile payments, such as PayPal, and may soon be competing with Twitter and other social media platforms that have recently entered the space.
The micro-blogging social network has taken a heavy focus on advertising on smartphones and tablets.
Twitter experienced a considerable jump in its stock price – initially leaping by over 6 percent – when it announced that it would be adding promoted tweets on third party mobile apps, as well as smartphone friendly websites, as a part of a broader advertising distribution program that it has now launched.
This new mobile advertising strategy is designed to help to broaden the reach of the social network’s ads.
This will allow Twitter to be able to reach into other mobile apps and websites in order to place ads in front of a much larger number of viewers. It will expand the number of potential ad viewers well beyond the 284 million estimated users who actively use the micro-blogging service every month. The first partners that have joined with Twitter in this advertising program include Yahoo Japan and the Flipboard newsreader app.
There are already thousands of brands that advertise on Twitter and they could now benefit from ads on additional mobile apps.
According to a post that Twitter added to its official blog, “For the thousands of brands already advertising on Twitter, these new partnerships open a significant opportunity to extend the reach of their message to a larger audience.”
This announcement was made very shortly before the financial results for the fourth quarter were announced by the company. The stock price has been facing some considerable pressure over the last while. In fact, when compared to its 52 week high point that brought it to $67.24, it has faced a drop of a whopping 40 percent. This meant that the 6.5 percent increase that it saw at the initial announcement of its new third party advertising partnerships was an especially welcome change from the direction that it had been taking.
This is believed to be only the start of the partnerships that will be forming between Twitter and various mobile apps and websites around the world. It will be interesting to watch as new applications come aboard and to view the impact that this will have on the stock price over time.
