Facebook is aggressively ramping up its efforts to monetize its platform for advertisers, developers, and other commercially-minded users.
“At Mobile World Congress this year we announced an improved mobile payments flow for mobile web apps,” the social networking giant posted earlier this week. “Today we are starting to roll it out. This low friction (two steps) carrier billing is now available on the majority of carriers in the US and the UK and will be rolled out to additional operators worldwide.”
The payment flow is simple. Users who want to pay for a virtual or digital good in a mobile web app open the payment dialog and confirm their purchase.
By the company’s own admission, developers who already integrated Facebook Payments on the mobile web “don’t need to do anything to benefit from this new flow.”
“Mobile web developers interested in adding Facebook Payments to their mobile website can integrate through our payments API,” Facebook says. “Instructions and tips can be found here. To see the new payment flow in action, check out SkyScraper City on m.facebook.com.”
As MMW reported Wednesday, Facebook this week has also taken a bold step to broaden its appeal to marketers. Advertisers, for example, can now delegate where they want their ads to show.
“Marketers were able to buy sponsored stories on mobile as part of a bundle since fMC earlier this year,” a Facebook spokesperson tells Mobile Marketing Watch. “Today’s announcement just makes it possible for them to buy sponsored stories on mobile separately from other placements.”