Is Facebook Poised to Launch a Significant Payments Initiative in Asia?
Facebook is reportedly planning to launch a service that will allow its users in Asia to “top up” their prepaid mobile phone minutes with Facebook Credits.
A request for comment from Facebook went unanswered.
Our source — a banking executive at a major Asian bank who says he has been briefed on the plans — told me at this week’s Finovate that Facebook is “reasonably close” to implementing the program, meaning it is months away from launch, not years. If true, the move would be Facebook’s first foray into payments beyond the confines of their site, and, in my opinion, represents the social network’s most significant financial services initiative to date.
Facebook Credits is Facebook’s home-grown virtual currency.
No doubt Facebook would be attacking the world’s hottest mobile market first. Strategy Analytics, a research firm, estimated earlier this year that nearly 530 million users browsed the web via mobile device in 2009, and much of that traffic is happening in Asia. The China Internet Network Information Center says that mobile internet users in China alone reached 233 million. The numbers would suggest that Facebook could enjoy significant revenue from this as-yet-rumored initiative.
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