Social Commerce: Mobile Shopping Made Easy

Share a funny meme, comment on the trending news, or make an online purchase—all without leaving your favorite social network. Today, it’s entirely possible thanks to the marriage of social media and mobile payments technology.

As if social media and mobile aren’t hot enough topics on their own, monetizing the relationship between the two makes for big news, and for quantifiable reason. Citing eMarketer data, Mobyaffiliates says that in 2016, people will predominantly access social media using mobile devices—and mobile social network users will rise to estimated 162.6M, up 7.5% from 2015. And according to Gartner, U.S. customers’ mobile engagement behavior will drive mobile commerce revenue in the U.S. to 50% of U.S. digital commerce revenue by 2017.

Customers “Talk” On Social Media…

With access to a whole lot of information about users based on their media streams, “likes” and “follows,” location check-ins, and more, social networks are a goldmine for e-retailers. Brands can get to know customers’ behavior and preferences, and target ads and other content within the sites to drive sales. That means they’ll be pouring money into social sales—a new channel ripe with opportunity.

…and the Payments Industry Listens

Moreover, companies can hear what consumers have to say about making mobile/social payments. Relevant public “conversations” in the social media-sphere are actively monitored and insights are being used to develop new capabilities that meet users’ needs. According to PaymentsSource.com’s Social Networks Know What’s Next for Mobile Payments, consumers want:

• improved overall customer experience
• easier-to-use wallet interfaces with more advanced and comprehensive features
• increased number of businesses that accept mobile payments, and
• wider range of mobile devices that are technologically capable of making mobile payments

Mobile payment providers and other technology developers are looking to partner with social media companies to take advantage of this evolution—of social ecommerce—while it’s still relatively young. One example is Western Union Co, who created an API enabling social networks to offer social and text payment capabilities to their customers. (See Western Union Launches Social, Mobile Payments for details.)

The goal of the technology is to let shoppers make purchases from within their social network without leaving the site. Users can simply click on a display ad or a button to get product information and/or make a purchase without having to download and access other websites or apps.

Social-Mobile Shopping Today

Here’s a look at a few popular social sites and their users’ payment options:

Facebook – The social media giant offers Facebook Payments for business, commercial, and merchant transactions; for peer-to-peer payments, users can link their debit card number to the Facebook Messenger app. And according to an item on NFC World, users will soon be able to order and pay for an Uber taxi, too.

Twitter – Sponsored tweets include a “Buy Now” button. DigitalTrends reported on Twitter and their partner, the payment startup Stripe, and their tool, Relay, which stores users’ credit card information for Twitter-based purchases.

Snapchat – The video messaging app’s answer to P2P payment money transfer is Snapcash, which uses Square Cash’s email payment system. As discussed on recode.net, Snapchat recently invested in the company behind Spring, a virtual shopping application that catalogues users’ favorite brands and facilitates purchases.

Pinterest – The photo sharing/visual discovery website has buyable pins featuring “Buy It” buttons and recently introduced a tool to help users track price drops on products they’ve pinned. Visit TheNextWeb.com and TechCrunch.com for additional details.