Two social media giants may be taking a dip in payments for the data.

Over the past week, payments rumors and announcements came from the two largest social media companies in Silicon Valley. Facebook announced a “buy” button pilot program, and Twitter acquired payments company CardSpring. Why are they interested in e-commerce? Analysts think the transaction data has a lot to do with it.

The payments processing market has notoriously small profit margins — revenue is made in cents, not dollars, and a high volume of transactions is needed to make it lucrative for companies.

Silicon Valley companies like Facebook are essentially a massive ad platform, Aite Group’s Nathalie Reinelt told Bank Innovation. The true value in the transactions that these companies are getting ready to process is in the transaction data, which they can sell to advertisers.

Nick Holland, senior analyst at Javelin, spoke to Bank Innovation about what exactly is transaction data, saying that if companies like Facebook and Twitter can “get hold of SKU-level data, it can be massively powerful. It’s also potentially sticky, because if it becomes the de facto way of sending money, there will be one less reason for users to ditch to it….The greatest value [from transaction data] is being able to tell what customers are buying.”

Twitter’s acquisition of CardSpring is notable because it could help the microblogging service enter transactions in the physical world, though hashtags and tweets that offer discounts on user purchases. 80% t0 90% of transactions are still done physically, and for a digital company to get a piece of that massive pie could be highly lucrative.

Of course, these companies will actually need to convince users to conduct transactions within their social platform, which will be a challenge, but Reinelt noted that Silicon Valley has an advantage over the financial services industry when it comes to testing out risky ideas. “Companies like Facebook have so much money to throw at projects and they’re not the end of the world if it fails. In banking, the projects are much more controlled and very goal-orientated, and if it doesn’t work out, people get fired.”

These social media giants have the luxury of testing out these business models, but its up to the customer to determine whether or not they’ll be adopted.