Facebook is open to the possibility of teaming up with Apple Pay and any other such payment services, for that matter.
Social media is on the rise and so are mobile payments, so the two should go well together. We live in a mobile-driven world where increasingly more users rely on their smartphones to make payments, browse the Web and communicate on social networks.
Facebook is one of the world's most popular social networks and is always looking for ways to improve the experience, add new features and options and, of course, monetize ads.
While discussing Facebook's stance on potential partnerships with payment service providers, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company is willing to team up with payment services such as Apple Pay.
Zuckerberg said several times that Facebook was not interested in becoming a payments business or endorsing a specific payments product. The advertising business, however, is what Facebook is into.
Facebook has already been experimenting with various e-commerce options. The company added an option to send money to friends via Facebook Messenger in March 2015, and revealed a new Facebook Shopping feed in October 2015. Later the same year, in December, Facebook announced that it will allow users to purchase tickets directly through event pages.
Facilitating payments is important for Facebook, because it could in turn boost traffic on its social network. Traffic is essential for monetizing ads, and Facebook makes some pretty money from selling ad space.
Taking more options into account when it comes to payments could further widen Facebook's appeal, and Zuckerberg is open to new partnerships on this front.
"We'll partner with everyone who does payments," said the Facebook CEO, as cited by AppleInsider. "We look at the stuff that Apple is doing with Apple Pay, for example, as a really neat innovation in the space that takes a lot of friction out of transactions as well."
This means that we may soon see new Facebook options that integrate Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Android Pay and other such services, if the companies agree on new partnerships.
It's worth pointing out, however, that Zuckerberg simply expressed Facebook's interest in such prospects. The executive did not announce any actual deals, commitments or discussions with payment service providers at this point, so it remains to be seen whether such possibilities will materialize.
