Facebook Credits Will Spark Race For On-Site "Buy Now" Buttons

Want to get an idea about the future of the payments industry? Taking a look at Facebook's push for their Credits platform and the recent boom in in-app payment providers will help shed some light. As I highlighted on Friday, reduction of friction is the center of "innovation" right now on the internet. For payments, that means easier ways to make transactions. While new offerings, like SMS payment providers, provide solutions to expand the payments market, the most significant innovation in payments is instant, one-click, "buy now" buttons. For application developers, selling virtual goods has become one of the primary monetization models. However online publishers, like the New York Times, FastCompany, or one of many thousands of popular blogs have yet to completely embrace the potential for digital goods. This doesn't just mean virtual gifts. It can include things like software or other downloadable applications as well as ebooks and other digital content. Right now there is an explosion in solutions for the transaction of digital goods and it's only beginning. Take the publishing industry for example. Last week, Nicholas Negroponte predicted that the physical book will be dead in 5 years. While the prediction may be more of a headline grabber than anything else, it emphasizes the ongoing shift from physical content to digital content. New payment and distribution solutions will continue to pop-up as this shift continues. Right now Facebook Credits is one payment solution which is part of this ongoing shift. Currently the solution is limited to applications however one could see this shift continue off-site. As this shift takes place, one can expect that Google, Amazon, Apple, Paypal, and others will all participate in the race to help make instant transactions possible. Granted, right now online payments are relatively frictionless, however many sellers of digital goods continue to drive users through an off-site payment process. While many payments specialists would argue that it's the only way to keep things secure, that argument is for people who like to stay stuck in the old way of doing things. Payfone is one provider who recently announced the market and provides 1-Touch checkout. There are many more that will enter the market in the near future, all of which make it quicker to checkout. Facebook Credits stands out in that it's a global currency, not a payment provider. However the company has figured out a way to make transactions much easier, something that will become fairly ubiquitous across online transactions.

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Facebook Credits Will Spark Race For On-Site "Buy Now" Buttons

Nick O'Neill

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