Facebook has been granted a licence to operate money transfers between individuals. The approval by the Irish authorities has been confirmed.
This has enabled Facebook to enter the Bank of Spain registry for companies authorised for electronic payments.
This opens us an enormous market for Facebook and potentially pits them in direct completion with PayPal, Apple Pay etc.
The social media company has been offering payment services to users for the past year. Now it seems the company intends to roll out the service to other markets.
Facebook currently boasts an estimated 1.6 billion users and continues to be the dominant social media company.
The company also owns Whatsapp, the world´s largest instant messaging application.
After rapid growth, Facebook is now focusing on monetising its massive client base.
The introduction of paid advertisements for business was initially less successful than Google´s adwords, but is now gathering pace and popularity, as companies get to grips with best utilisation of social media for marketing purposes.
To enable Facebook users to send payments between friends or even purchase products via Facebook accounts, opens up a whole new revenue stream for the company.
Most importantly it keeps users within Facebook and will enable companies to operate a more effective method of direct marketing for products.
The move will obviously be of concern to the traditional banking industry. It is a continuation of several established IT and tech companies encroachment on the digital payment market.