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Facebook looks to be setting up a finance arm to run payments

As social networks outside of the US borders scramble to comply with President Trump’s mood on any given day, Facebook is looking to expand.

Word on the street is that Facebook has developed Facebook Financial, an initiative which will run all of Facebook’s payment solutions.

These solutions include Novi (formerly Calibra, the digital wallet for Libra), WhatsApp Pay and Facebook Pay.

According to a report by Bloomberg (paywall) the idea behind Facebook Financial is to align all of Facebook’s various payment and ecommerce applications under one roof.

The division will be headed by Libra co-creator, David Marcus.

“We have a lot of commerce stuff going on across Facebook,” Marcus told Bloomberg. “It felt like it was the right thing to do to rationalize the strategy at a company level around all things payments,” Marcus added.

While he is now working with Facebook Financial, Marcus will reportedly continue running Novi and he will remain involved with WhatsApp’s payment solutions in India and Brazil.

Looking at Facebook overall this makes a degree of sense.

Grouping all of the firm’s various payment platforms under one roof is a wise move. However, Facebook seems to think that if folks can make payments through its platform that will lure more advertisers to the Facebook group.

That hinges on Facebook’s financial services actually being used by people and that regulators from around the world give Facebook the ability to operate in their markets.

We do note the obvious comparisons to WeChat and its payment ecosystem but we’re curious to see if Facebook can emulate that success.

With WhatsApp Pay having issues getting off the ground in Brazil, we’re not to sure of Facebook’s chances of success in the space but we’ll be keeping an eye on this to see how this new division grows, if at all.

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