Facebook rolls out 'low-friction' mobile payments system

The new payment flow reduces the number of steps necessary to complete a purchase from seven to two.

 

Facebook began rolling out a new mobile payments system today that reduces the number of steps users must take to complete a purchase from seven to two.

The "low-friction carrier billing" is available to the majority of wireless carriers in the U.S. and U.K. as well as in more than 60 countries around the world, Facebook said today in a developer blog announcing the new system. While U.S. carriers AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are already on board with the system, one of the notable names not on the list is Verizon's.

"The payment flow is simple," Jessi Xu, a Facebook software engineer, said in the post. "Users who want to pay for a virtual or digital good in a mobile web app open the payment dialog and confirm their purchase."

Facebook's new two-step mobile payments system.

(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook revealed in February that it was working to revamp mobile payments to reduce the number of steps necessary to complete a purchase.

"The payments experience is just broken for end users," Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said at the World Mobile Conference, adding that the social networking giant was working on "partnerships with operators to improve the user and developer experience around operator billing that will eliminate the SMS verification for vast majority of customers."

Developers who have already integrated Facebook Payments into their mobile Web won't need to do anything to upgrade to the new system. Developers can include the new payments system in their Facebook apps via the social network's Payments API.

Facebook Working to Allow Access to Kids Under 13

Facebook is developing technology that would allow children younger than 13 years old to use the social-networking site under parental supervision, a step that could help the company tap a new pool of users for revenue but also inflame privacy concerns.

Mechanisms being tested include connecting children's accounts to their parents' and controls that would allow parents to decide whom their kids can "friend" and what applications they can use, people who have spoken with Facebook executives about the technology said. The under-13 features could enable Facebook and its partners to charge parents for games and other entertainment accessed by their children, the people said.

Facebook currently bans users under 13. But many kids lie about their ages to get accounts, putting the company in an awkward position regarding a federal law that requires sites to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal data from children.

Any attempt to give younger kids access to the site would be extraordinarily sensitive, given regulators' already heightened concerns about how Facebook protects user privacy. But Facebook, concerned that it faces reputational and regulatory risks from children already using the service despite its rules, believes it has little choice but to look into ways of establishing controls that could formalize their presence on the site, people familiar with the matter said.

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