Twitter is reportedly planning to launch a new ‘buy’ button later this year, allowing users to purchase items from businesses without leaving the service.
A Re/code report over the weekend claims the San Francisco-based company has in recent months inked a deal with payments startup Stripe to help integrate the buy button into its service, a feature it hopes will help hold users within the microblogging site and ultimately lead to increased revenue. As for businesses, it means they can sell items directly from tweets.
It was suggested as long ago as January that Twitter was moving to link up with Stripe, though no official announcement has ever been made about such a deal. Re/code’s “multiple industry sources” say that at some point in the intervening months the two companies agreed to work together on introducing a buy button for Twitter.
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Screenshots that surfaced in February appeared to show a ‘Twitter Commerce’ mock-up featuring a buy button, while just a few months ago, in June, a buy button was spotted by some users on their timelines as the company tested the service.
It’s believed Twitter is working to get its e-commerce button up and running in time for the holiday season as the company explores various ways to boost its income.
Its most recent financial report beat Wall Street expectations, with the company taking $312 million for the three-month period from April to June, marking a 124 percent increase on the same period a year earlier. Almost $280 million of that came from advertising, the company said. However, a buy button that allows Twitter to take a cut of any sales made through its service could help to further strengthen the balance sheet.
E-commerce initiatives are becoming of increasing interest to social media companies, with Facebook, too, looking to incorporate a buy button within its service.
Stripe, the work of Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison, launched in 2011. The service, whose simple integration tools have helped make it a hit with developers, secured $80 million in a funding round at the start of 2014 and has even been touted as a possible threat to online payment giant PayPal.
