Facebook looks to prove the worth of its ads with new payment feature

In a bid to prove that its in-app ads are generating purchases, social media giant Facebook is to partner with payment processors PayPal, Stripe and Braintree to allow users to enter their billing details on mobile commerce sites using a new ‘autofill with Facebook’ feature.

The partnerships follow a trial period for the feature on e-commerce site JackThreads, as well as Mosaic’s iOS apps. It is reported that whilst PayPal has committed to the partnership, it has yet to build the integration feature.

The partnerships will offer Facebook the chance to glean more insight into the spending habits of its users, and will allow the social network to target its ads more carefully. As well as this, the development could also be a precursor to Facebook building its own payments service.

Facebook payments product manager Deb Liu commented: “We’re all trying to solve the same problem: helping devs monetize and convert. The more conversions, the more payment volume that goes through Braintree, Stripe, or PayPal [and they make their fee that way].”

Moreover, Liu states that Facebook is looking to identify and tend to other issues with e-commerce: “Mobile is where the conversion gap is, where our customers are going in the future. It’s really important to make this an amazing mobile product. That said, we don’t rule out ever doing this on desktop some day.”