EXCLUSIVE – Payments might not be a substantial portion of social media platform Facebook’s revenues, but it is an important one — particularly as non-payment companies increasingly begin to launch payment capabilities for social media platforms such as Messenger.
In its Q4’17 earnings call yesterday, Facebook reported a $193 million in revenues from payments. That’s a 7% increase from the previous quarter and over 10% from the year’s first quarter.
And although that number is a small fraction of the company’s nearly $13 billion in Q4 revenues, there is no denying that over the past year, Facebook has been making a concerted effort to partner with banks and fintechs alike to enable payment features through its messaging platform, Facebook Messenger.
The Menlo Park, Calif-based Facebook has inked a partnership with payments platform PayPal on various features, including P2P as well as invoicing; and Visa on its Visa Digital Enablement Program. Facebook has also partnered with various banks including Norwegian bank Nordea and more recently Belgium bank Belfius, to enable P2P capabilities.
Then there are fintechs like Nuvo, a marketplace for mortgages in the U.K., that earlier this month launched a chatbot service through Facebook Messenger.
There’s no denying Facebook’s continued efforts in the payments space. But one area in the financial services sector that Facebook is clearly not interested in is cryptocurrency.
In a recent blogpost, Facebook said it was banning any advertisement on cryptocurrency including bitcoin, as well as initial coin offerings (ICOs) on its site.
According to that blogpost:
We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.
This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across our platforms including Facebook, Audience Network and Instagram. We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.
Speaking of advertisements, that still makes the largest source of the company’s revenues. This quarter, it reported $12.9 billion in revenues of which $12.7 billion came from advertising.
To learn more about payments and mobile banking, join us on March 5-6, 2018 at the Parc 55 in San Francisco for Bank Innovation 2018. Click here to register.