That’s at Mashable’s Social Good Conference last week, that Facebook marketing and outreach director Randi Zuckerberg led us to believe in an imminent Facebook payment platform launch.
The first signs of this long-run project became public in November last year when Facebook launched its virtual currency called Facebook “credits”. All the prices until then displayed in dollars in Facebook virtual gift shop, were converted in Facebook credits, with an exchange rate of a 100 credits for $1. Six months later, in May 2009, Facebook made the credits acquired by credit cards available as a means of payment for third-party game developers and virtual gift makers who have built Facebook applications. Finally, not later than last June this year, Facebook added 14 new currencies to the already accepted US dollar by its micro-payment platform.
Nothing much came out of the famous social network management until last week, when 4 non-profit 
organisations have been announced to cooperate to Facebook payment platform test: Project Red, Kiva, World Wildlife Fund and Toms Shoes (not non-profit, but a retailer that donates a pair of shoes for every pair sold). Regarding to Mr. Zuckerberg statement: “we may open to everyone really soon after that.”, it seems to be one of the last test before its actual launch on the market. We shall then consider Facebook as an e-commerce actor and as a payment platform service sooner than expected! We can suppose that this service will be proposed to Facebook applications or third-party applications in exchange of a small percentage taken off of each transaction. This new revenue stream appears to be a sign of a shift in Facebook business model. Indeed, this platform will enable the social network to get important incomes from a commerce activity, and consequently become less reliant on its advertising-based business model.
- Facebook a PayPal Killer?
You may have read this catchy title somewhere already… Indeed, rumours dating from few months were qualifying Facebook payment platform as being a “Wallet”, kind of eBay Inc.’s PayPal online payments platform (which generated $2.4 billion in revenue in 2008). 
However, according to a CNet article and to its source: “It’s an absolute change in strategy,” – “So, they’re not competing with PayPal now.”, it seems like Facebook payment platform has changed of nature and scope since the first rumours have been heard. However, even if the Facebook payment system may not be THE PayPal killer, it may become one of Facebook’s most valuable assets by contributing to up to a third of Facebook’s revenue (Mr. Valdes, Gartner Research analyst). Actually, when we know that Zynga, Facebook’s largest applications developer (42m users) generates annual sales of about $100m, and that all together, Facebook developers expect to make more than $500m this year , we can then imagine for Facebook to become a major e-commerce player!
- Virtual Money, Real Currencies
With more than 250 million users worldwide, Facebook credits would turn out to be one of the only “worldwide currency” (in competition with Monopoly money though, lol). However, in order to deliver this standard monetary unit, Facebook Inc. had to gather a full squad of economists, web developers and online payment specialists. Indeed, with more than 70% of its users living outside of the US, one of the major issues of the platform implementation will be to deal with various currencies applications. In fact, if this last point is not the usual weakness of virtual currencies, then the security aspect of the platform will put the currency out of business. One of the most heard examples is when the Second Life’s “Linden Dollars” have been badly affected by a series of scams which prompted the virtual world to shut down user-run banks. However, regarding to Facebook’s figures, it looks like the social network may match the “big, robust, more stable player” depicted by Lisa Rutherford (president of Twofish), and needed in order to launch and sustain a successful global virtual currency.
- Opportunities
Three opportunities resulting from the launch of the payment platform have been identified so far:
• Could help developers to monetise their applications,
• Could leverage Facebook Connect function (Facebook’s user login used to be identified on partners’ websites): “One-click” Purchase Capability,
• “iBuy” or “iPurchase” function could be created, in the same way as “iLike” is currently used.
Reference:
I am Edouard, born French and currently living in Brisbane, AUS. This blog has been created within the framework of 
Hey Edouard,
Nice collection of interesting stories there. In particular, I like the bit about opportunities that will come out of this new pay system. I don’t use facebook as much as I probably should but I’ll have to check this out.
Thanks for the link,
Ben McCallum
I don’t know If I said it already but …Excellent site, keep up the good work. I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks,
A definite great read..Tony Brown