“Payments happen where people are and where they interact. As social media is exactly doing this, bringing people together and make it easy for them to interact, it is therefore clear that payment and social interaction belong together.”
This is echoed by Massimiliano Alvisini, the regional vice president Northern Europe & Iberia at Western Union. Definitely, mobile payment keeps expanding its services scope to meet customer’s demand and the market development trend, while social media can provide a huge consumer base. I think WeChat is a successful example which supports the above statement.
WeChat is a popular messaging app in China. Compared with WhatsApp or Facebook’s messager, WeChat has a mobile wallet feature that can process both online and in-store payments. As a social media, WeChat has built a large user relationship, which enabled it to developed money transfer service with higher security confidence and convenience to transfer money among users (friends). Specifically, users do not need to type in any payment info. Users just need to open the dialog between friends, and click the transfer tab to send money. Besides sharing stream among friends, users can share a group purchase order via stream that friends form a group to place an order with great discount.
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