Facebook Payments

• 4 May 2017 | 1460 Views | By Mint2Save

Facebook is an eye-catching Application used to share and connect with friends, family, and people you know or you wanted to know. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004.

Since Facebook became a phenomena, mainstream media has often compared Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Though most people disagree with Mark Zukerberg being the next Bill Gates, they both share numerous similarities when it comes to business.

Both of them lead in software based disruptive technologies that have changed the whole course of a normal daily life.

While Gates seems to have completed his professional journey and is busy in humanitarian works, Mark certainly has a long way to go. Mark seems to have realized that social networking is just not limited to a bunch of people communicating with each other, but should intend to replicate one’s life over the internet.

For obvious reasons, money is a daily inevitable necessity of today. Monetary transactions are the sole reason of existence of banks, businesses and jobs.

As of today, Facebook’s online and offline presence is massive. With acquisitions of Instagram, Oculus and WhatsApp, this small dorm startup is creating a new chapter in connecting the world.

One of those aspects is digital payments. Facebook has now started to focus on digital transactions to make peer to peer and e-commerce businesses work smoother. As of today, Facebook supports more than 80 payment methods from around the world, such as:

• Credit cards: American Express, Mastercard, Visa
• Mobile
• PayPal
• Game Cards and much more

When you chat or discuss with your friends about resolving debts or dividing the bill, then, at that moment you don’t need to open a new app like PayPal or Venmo to send money to friends. So for such purpose, Facebook offers to the public a payment aspect for Facebook Messenger which assists in sending money to friends via your Visa or Mastercard debit card and tap a “$” button on iOS, desktop with zero charge and Android.

The head of Facebook Messenger “David Marcus” publicized that the social platform is at now enabling companies and brands to sell their products within Messenger app by adding up payment services. Because of which now customers can pay for stuff without having to leave the Messenger app.

It is said that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg wants to be the part of zooming mobile payment industry. Mark Zuckerberg wanted to make the business interactions a slightly more transactional in terms of payments.

Payment Methods by Facebook

1. Funding Instruments

The spoke person of the Facebook said that they want to make Facebook Payments more convenient and secure for the users, though they now allow users to fund your transactions by using various methods such as credit cards and debit cards, PayPal, Facebook Gift Cards, and other amazing payment methods.

2. PayPal

Last year, Facebook launched PayPal based money transfer service on its Messenger app which helps its users to send and request or transfer money using the app. So by making and receiving payments will become a more transactional way rather than communicating through plain and boring emails. It is a great step for peer to peer payments as Facebook Messenger has a worldwide presence with over 100 million users all over. 

Since PayPal is a long known name in the world of digital payments, it also has plentiful users. Now, integrating chat systems with payments can have a lot of benefits. Users can fix their outing plans and allocate budget, small businesses can readily take payments without much necessary software integration. Most important of all, the accounting wouldn’t be a problem, as Facebook as well as PayPal believes in keeping past data intact and anytime accessible.

3. Net Banking and Paytm

The online Banking and Paytm are the easiest payment methods used by Facebook.  For example, in case you want to boost advertising on Facebook such as boosting your post or page/article or page offer by using Paytm wallet.

Like you want to boost your post:

• First, go to the fan page  and choose the post you want to boost up and then you see a preview of your advertisement. 
• Then select Time duration Account and Put your budget amount and tap On Boost.
• Then you will be redirected to Paytm and after doing payment process your transaction is processed or advertised as sponsors.

4. Facebook Gift Cards

Facebook Gift Cards may help users to enhance electronic value “Balance” on Facebook. You can then utilize this Balance on FB as a payment method. But under some conditions:

1. If you fill up the Gift Card’s PIN and click Redeem on the website then you will be credited the Gift Card’s value to your Balance.

2. You can use your Balance towards funding transactions you wish to execute and if in case your Balance is not enough to complete a transaction, then they will ask you to choose another payment method to cover the variation.

3. Note that the Gift Card balances are not deposits and they do not earn interest.

4. Few of the Facebook Gift Cards have bonus offers or Discounts which are only open to customers who redeem a participating Facebook Gift Card during the offer period.

5. You cannot transfer or sell your Balance or any portion thereof to anyone outside of Facebook.

5. Mobile billing

Facebook has another payment method as Mobile operator billing which is easy to use for the users. But Facebook is not responsible for any charges and fees to your mobile plan service or billing. Users need to directly contact the mobile operator for such issues.

Recently, an International money transfer service TransferWise Ltd. has declared the incorporation with Facebook Inc.’s Messenger that allows users to set up foreign exchange transactions on chat service. But this service is only available for payment in few countries i.e. U.S., Canada, Australia, U.K., and Europe.  Facebook has made a great move to get payment services with Messenger.

Other than these services, Facebook already has a full fledged purchase portal that allows users to store money and use it to purchase services or add-ons for games.

Safety Features in Facebook Payments

Since its inception, Facebook has tried to match with the hardware platforms in maximum aspects. It becomes important when security features are to be derived from phones. Integration of Apple’s touch ID in payments is one such example.

Now Apple doesn’t have a monopoly in mobile phones, so developers at Facebook are working at making biometric applications for all platforms and the conventional PIN based transaction system is already in place for desktop and laptop computers.