Financial services giant MasterCard has expressed interest in helping Facebook and Twitter to develop their payment services. Talks with the social media titans are said to be ongoing, though it isn’t yet entirely clear what form any resulting partnerships could take.
Speaking to CNBC at the Copenhagen-based Money 2020 fintech conference today, Ann Cairns, president of international markets at MasterCard, revealed that, in the working with these firms, “we would figure out what we can do together, where our network could play into their space and connect up.”
She cited “something like a P2P (peer-to-peer) service” as a suitable project with Facebook. Despite the absence of a formal partnership between the two companies, in the US, MasterCard cards can already be used for sending cash via Facebook Messenger.
Cairns said that a collaboration with Twitter would differ from this due to the different products on offer. She explained that “it’s really where do the two business models coalesce”.
MasterCard payment cards can also already be used with Apple Pay on compatible iOS devices – and, incidentally, Facebook evidently could soon become an Apple Pay partner.