Facebook cryptocurrency project could change the landscape of e-commerce



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After a year with almost no news of Facebook's secret Blockchain division, and if or how The Social Network could use the digital currency trading process, we are now starting to have leaks and notes. And if the reports prove accurate, it could be one of the most significant changes for the company and could affect the trajectory of e-commerce more broadly.

Last March, the New York Times reported that Facebook would be coming soon seeking to launch its own cryptocurrency offering, which would allow users of Facebook applications to easily exchange money with friends at no additional cost. Apparently, the Indian market is the main focus of this option. India sees the highest amount of funds sent between family members through remittances, which the proposed process would facilitate.

Facebook would obviously like to expand its presence in India, the second most populous country in the world, while starting with this type of payment would give Facebook the means to extend the same to other, hosted, funds transfers. within Facebook, allowing a simplified international currency exchange.

Reports suggest that Facebook could even look even bigger than that. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company is now working alone, a cryptocurrency-based payment network that theoretically would be able to compete directly with conventional credit cards.

According to WSJ:

"Facebook Inc. is recruiting dozens of financial companies and online merchants to help launch a cryptocurrency-based payment system on the gigantic social network.The effort, if it ended, threatened to undermine the traditional lucrative plumbing of e-commerce and would probably be the most common application to date of cryptocurrency. "

According to the WSJ report, this effort should be a success "stablecoin", a valuable cryptocurrency, is linked to conventional money markets. It is probably for this reason that Facebook needs the support of financial companies to insure against fluctuations in the bitcoin markets, which can have a significant impact on the moles at any time.

In this, Facebook would not only seek to facilitate core fund transfers, but would essentially position its payment network as a direct competitor of Visa and MasterCard. This would allow Facebook to reduce fees and charges badociated with traditional fund transfers, while facilitating direct international payments on its network, using only your existing Facebook credentials.

And this process could have benefits even beyond Facebook itself – as Ars Technica notes:

"One of the great strategic advantages of Facebook is the fact that a large number of websites are already using Facebook's APIs to allow users to log in with the help of their Facebook information." Facebook ID It could be simple to extend this existing infrastructure to allow users to make purchases on third parties. third parties using their Facebook credentials. "

Users would be able to earn FaceCoins and accumulate them on their Facebook profile for use in network transactions. Presumably, the use of such parts would expand to Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, and users would be able to transfer funds to their FaceCoin account, which would give them a Facebook wallet closed to facilitate the same .

This does not seem revolutionary, but facilitating payments online is a complex process, especially across borders. If Facebook is able to do this, while reducing badociated costs, it will be a huge gain and you can bet that Facebook users would like a one-click purchase process available for all the products and services listed in the different software of Facebook. applications and on partner sites.

But there is also another interesting wrinkle to this:

"Facebook also plans to pay users for room fractions to watch commercials, chat with other content or shop on its platform."

The details available on this subject are very limited, but through the same process, Facebook may also be able to stimulate activity in the application. Various applications use the same system – in Pokemon Go, for example, you can earn a small amount of chips for in-app purchases by playing the game. The amount you can earn through this is capped, but that makes you spend more money by giving you a little money for your in – store purchases – when you are about to accumulate enough for what you want, and you only need that of an extra dollar. why not spend a little bit to get there?

Does this approach work? Pokemon Go, which far exceeded its peak, generated revenue of $ 795 million in 2018, an increase of 35% over the previous year. It is fair to badume that linking in-app activity to purchase incentives played a role in this increase.

It will be interesting to see how Facebook might consider implementing this, and what it seems to entice to incite – and then, how do the fraudsters try to trick the system – but overall it This is an extremely interesting project from The Social Network, and this, as previously stated, could result in a major shift for the platform and the e-commerce as a whole.

Certainly something to watch for in the months to come.

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