(Bloomberg) – Facebook Inc. unveiled a new group to pursue opportunities for payments and commerce and put David Marcus, co-maker of its Libra cryptocurrency project, at the forefront of the initiative.
Internationally called F2, short for Facebook Financial, the team will carry out all payment projects, including Facebook Pay, the feature of universal payments of the company that it intends to build in all its apps.
Marcus will continue Novi, the division building a digital wallet to hold the Libra cryptocurrency. He will also be involved in WhatsApp payment efforts in countries like India and Brazil. Facebook has formerly Upwork Inc. Chief Executive Officer Stephane Kasriel hired to serve as vice president of payments under Marcus. Facebook shares slipped 1.5% to $ 264.26 on Monday after hitting a record high last week.
This is the latest step in a company-wide effort to bring individual Facebook products and apps closer together. Over the past two years, Instagram and WhatsApp have rebranded so that people know they own Facebook, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to integrate all of the company’s messaging services.
“We have a lot of commercial stuff on Facebook,” Marcus said. “It felt like it was the right thing to do to rationalize the company-level strategy around all the payments for things.”
It is believed that if users can make purchases on Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, then Facebook advertising will grow more valuable, and users will spend more time in the company’s apps. On Facebook’s call of the second quarter last month, Zuckerberg said he was ‘quite excited’ about commerce within messaging apps. “As payments grow over Messenger and WhatsApp, and because we can roll that out in more places, I think that will only grow as a trend,” he added.
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Marcus is a payment veteran, and a trusted executive within the company. He joined Facebook in 2014 from his role as president of PayPal Holdings Inc., and ran Facebook Messenger for four years before taking over Libra.
One priority is getting payments running within WhatsApp in India and Brazil. The company has invested heavily to make WhatsApp a destination for trading in those markets, but regulation has halted its payment efforts in both countries.
Marcus worked most recently to get Libra off the ground as a cryptocurrency for cross-border payments. That required negotiations with regulators, and the experience could help with Facebook’s other payment initiatives.
“It’s handy to have specific expertise in financial services regulation to build things the right way from the start,” he said. “In the world of financial services, it is very different from traditional technology companies that are not regulated.”
(Add Facebook shares in third paragraph.)
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