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 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.