Social media isn't just for social media anymore. Increasingly, it's doubling as an ecommerce platform – meaning impulse buying has never been so mindlessly easy.
Twitter recently started testing a "Buy" button, which allows users to make purchases directly from the company's mobile app in a seamless couple-of-clicks transaction.
San Francisco-based payments startup Stripe is powering this embedded purchasing feature, and now Recode reports that it is also behind Facebook's "Buy" button, which the social network announced it was testing back in July.
"With this feature, people on desktop or mobile can click the 'Buy' call-to-action button on ads and Page posts to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving Facebook," the company wrote in a blog post introducing the test run, which is being piloted on desktop and mobile versions of Facebook among several small- and medium-sized businesses nationwide.
Related: Facebook Pilots 'Buy' Button as Twitter Snaps Up Payments Startup CardSpring
As Recode notes, it's possible that Facebook could team up with other payment services in the future (it did just hire David Marcus, the ex-PayPal president), but for now, Stripe and Stripe alone is behind both in-feed purchasing services.
While Facebook and Twitter don't take a percentage of sales transacted over their respective channels (at least, not yet), adding an ecommerce component could attract advertisers who want a more tangible return-on-investment from their social media efforts than “likes” and followers.
No word yet on when either Twitter or Facebook's "Buy" button will transition from pilot test to actual feature, but it seems safe to predict we'll see more developments as the holidays approach.
Related: Facebook's 'Buy' Button Will Change How Brands Sell Online
