Facebook’s mobile payment system has always been a bit tedious, so yesterday the social network rolled out a new one. Instead of having seven steps in the payment process, there are now only two. The new payment system is mostly geared towards users who play Facebook application games, but the update also applies to promoting posts, and to other payments that go through Facebook.
The system has been designed so that your purchase can be made in just a few clicks and your gaming can continue. Jessie Xu, a Facebook mobile payment developer, elaborated: “At Mobile World Congress this year we announced an improved mobile payments flow for mobile web apps. Today we are starting to roll it out. This low friction (two steps) carrier billing is now available on the majority of carriers in the US and the UK and will be rolled out to additional operators worldwide.” Xu also said that the “payment flow is simple,” and that “the payment plan is easy to integrate into a mobile website.”
Xu mentioned that the payment system could be integrated into a mobile website in response to a comment by CTO Bret Taylor at the World Mobile Confrence, indicating that Facebook 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.”
If you’ve already heeded Facebook’s warnings about the upcoming improvement to the payment system, there’s no need to take any further action, and you’re good to go. If you want to include the new payment system in your mobile version of a program or game, though, now’s the time to see what Facebook has to offer for you.