Facebook’s Payments Test Makes Buying Products Online Easier
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Facebook is testing a way to make paying with a credit card easier, but it works with PayPal, not against it as AllThingsD wrote. The feature pre-fills credit card and billing info for making easier purchases through PayPal, Stripe, Braintree or other payment processors in third-party mobile apps. It’s not a payment processor itself, but could help Facebook prove the ROI of its ads. AllThingsD first reported Facebook was working on a new payments test with ecommerce app JackThreads, but mis-framed it as an immediate threat to PayPal’s core business. Since Facebook doesn’t actually process these mobile app payments, it can’t used as a replacement for PayPal. One day that could change with a lot of work on Facebook’s part to become a processor, but not yet. Matthäus Krzykowski confirms this assertion saying, “The simplest way to think about a competition with PayPal would be to imagine Facebook as Visa or American Express.”
