How Facebook Payments could work in the future

Imagine Facebook create a partnership with a global bank – let’s say HSBC – to offer a P2P payments service. Not Facebook credits, but proper P2P payments. How might it work?

Today, I found out.

I got Hyves.

Yes, I know that sounds like some sort of disease but it’s not. It’s
actually the Dutch version of Facebook, and is the largest social
networking tool in the Netherlands, with almost two-thirds of the
population connected (9 million users out of a population of around 16.7 million
people).

On March 24th, Hyves announced the introduction of
social payments in partnership with Rabobank, a Dutch bank and also one
of Europe’s most innovative retail banks.

Patrick de Laive, co-founder of Twittercounter and Paydro, has made a nice video in English explaining how it works:

as well as blogging about it at the Next Web Europe:

“With Hyves Payments you can send and receive money via your Hyves account. To each profile a link ‘send money to’ is added and you can instantly transfer amounts up to 150 eur to any one in the network. You can connect your Hyves account to your bank account (any bank in the Netherlands will do) to add money to or withdraw money from your Hyves account.

“Hyves users can also request money from their friends. Very useful after a night out.

“All payments are debit payments for peer-to-peer transactions, no costs are involved.

“At the same time Hyves Payments are open for merchants and because of a partnership with cash register system Eijsink, and mobile application MyOrder 30% of the restaurants and bars in the Netherlands instantly can accept Hyves Payments.

“For Merchant payments a 0.15 eur fixed transaction fee is charged to the merchant.

“This is a perfect example of how a true local social network can add value over the big international ones. I can’t see Facebook integrating a free peer-to-peer payment system for all their users. For stuff like this, deep integration and strong local partners are required. In this case Rabobank has the bank license, takes care of the money transfers and they also have an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) that handles the text messages involved to authenticate the payment. On the merchant side a partnership with Eijsink and MyOrder.”