Looking for a dollar sign: social network as a bank with 500 millions dollars deposit.
Wechat (weixin on Chinese) is the most popular social network in Asia and also one of the most successful company in China with capitalization ~250 billion USD. One of their success factors was to implement digital payment system.
They entered the market by help people to communicate with each other and share media. When they reached critical mass of users it opened an opportunity to help users pay their bills -- they found a way to do it secure and comfortable in two clicks. No more web forms or external mobile banking clients.
It was a win for users, but it was a win for wechat too -- their users started love their product even more and they get a huge amount of money in the system available for investments which increases with their growth.
Glad to see the most popular social network in Russia - Vkontakte, - released its first version of mobile payments in autumn. If each of 300+ million VK users will keep permanently at least 100 rubles (~2 USD) in the VK payment system, company will have minimum 30 billion RUB (~500 million USD) on their account in digital cash available for investments. I find valuable to look at what wechat offers now and validate this ideas on #Russian market.
They entered the market by help people to communicate with each other and share media. When they reached critical mass of users it opened an opportunity to help users pay their bills -- they found a way to do it secure and comfortable in two clicks. No more web forms or external mobile banking clients.
It was a win for users, but it was a win for wechat too -- their users started love their product even more and they get a huge amount of money in the system available for investments which increases with their growth.
Glad to see the most popular social network in Russia - Vkontakte, - released its first version of mobile payments in autumn. If each of 300+ million VK users will keep permanently at least 100 rubles (~2 USD) in the VK payment system, company will have minimum 30 billion RUB (~500 million USD) on their account in digital cash available for investments. I find valuable to look at what wechat offers now and validate this ideas on #Russian market.