My biggest barrier to ever using something like this is trust. Facebook has screwed with privacy policies, and over-complicated application data-sharing settings so many times that I can't imagine funneling money through their platform. While I trust them with some of my personal information which has value, there's just no trust there for me when it comes to actual money. Psychologically, they rank below Paypal in my mind ... and that's pretty low.
Can someone explain to me why FB chose to use credits over just actual money balances? Is it psychologically designed to get people more willing to fritter them in the same way it's easier to blow chips in a casino than real cash? Is it a way to funnel multiple currencies into one global currency?<p>It just seems like an extra unnecessary convoluted layer to me. Having a credit balance over real money balance is unnerving for me and would mean I would never put too much money on at any one time, there's too much risk of something bad happening like quick devaluation. Also it would probably be far less liquid and harder to convert back to cash.
It will be really interesting if this gets approved for the iOS app store, as it's in flagrant violation of the "must use iTunes payments for in-app purchases" rule. But what's Apple to do — no Facebook on iPhone? That would be insane.
I'm curious about Square's reaction to this. It seems like people could literally start paying with Facebook at restaurants and bars. Now the charges are just part of the monthly phone bill instead of a monthly credit card bill. For that matter I wonder what implications this could have for credit card companies. Anyone know if, say, AT&T pays the same charge for accepting credit cards as small merchants?
Is there any info on how much % facebook takes ?<p>The biggest failure of all the 'credit' and 'mobile carrier' solutions is the 15$-50% take they deduct, making it worthless for anything but virtual goods
> The goal is to make it much easier to pay for in-app purchases. It is well known that the more steps users have to go through to verify payment information on a mobile device, the more likely they are to abandon that purchase halfway through the process.<p>I wonder how Apple will react to that. They're pretty keen on banning apps that don't give them 30% of in app purchases. If Apple doesn't reject this they will have some explaining to do.
I've seen FB payments hyped to the moon lately as a revenue solution to Facebook's advertising 'problems' - my two cents are that Facebook is going to completely flop at mobile payments.<p>I don't think they can execute the product properly, from either a point of purchase proposition or from an easy-to-use perspective. PayPal struggles with complexity, and I believe Facebook's offering will not only be more confusing than PayPal but more complex. The world only needs (and or will use) more payment solutions if they're radically better, I don't see Facebook building that product, despite the user base they can tap into.<p>I think Facebook is failing to fix the problems in their existing core product, while they lurch forward into areas they have demonstrated a limited ability to deliver on.
> Re: virtual FB credits<p>I remember reading that their are some online games or communities in China that have billion of dollars worth of their own currency in the market. It is so large that they fix the fluctuations to the local exchange rate.<p>Unsure if this is the same story, but (Online) Gold Farming is estimated to be worth $3billion. (1)<p>Maybe FB are looking to mimic this growth. Add in the psychological and control aspects and you have your very own economy.<p><a href="http://news.discovery.com/tech/virtual-gold-farming-compared-factory-110531.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.discovery.com/tech/virtual-gold-farming-compared...</a>