MENLO PARK, Calif.–Facebook has created a new internal group focused on payments.
Called Facebook Financial and known internally as F2, it is designed to be an umbrella over all of the company’s payments initiatives, including Facebook Pay, which is its own e-commerce system. The effort is being led by David Marcus, the co-creator of its Libra cryptocurrency project.
The group is said to house other Facebook commerce projects such as Novi (formerly known as Calibra), a digital wallet designed for Libra, as well as WhatsApp Pay, which went live a few months ago in Brazil, according to Bloomberg.
The Bloomberg analysis suggested the objective is to unify payments on the company’s various platforms, such as Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp under one roof.
Facebook believes enabling such purchases makes advertising more valuable, Bloomberg reported, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg having said he’s quite keen on growing in-app transactions. “As payments grow across Messenger and WhatsApp, and as we’re able to roll that out in more places, I think that will only grow as a trend,” Zuckerberg said in a recent earnings call.
Helpful Expertise
Rolling out payment systems across different countries does require getting the approval from regulators, which Marcus has had experience with during his time with Libra. Marcus told Bloomberg it’s helpful to have this expertise in financial services regulation in his new role.
“In the financial services world, it’s very different than traditional technology companies that are not regulated,” he told Bloomberg.