After exploring what Apple Pay might offer the travel industry, Mariam Sharp takes a look at what Facebook and Google are up to

Undoubtedly, Facebook is a social network that travel marketers take seriously. They know what it means to engage consumers and encourage sharing of travel experiences and stories.

What’s clear is that travel is very important to Facebook. In 2013 it released a detailed study of the travel landscape titled Facebook Travel: Near and Now. According to the study, travel is the biggest vertical on the network with 51% of users saying that vacations are one of the three posts they see most. In fact, 42% of stories shared on timelines are actually travel experiences. And what is more, 84% of people say that their friends and families’ travel experiences inspire them.

So having a payments system seems logical and recently Facebook has been in the news. It appears they have plans for a mobile payments system using the platform’s Facebook Messenger iPhone app. Leaked screenshots and code from the app show a method for adding a credit or debit card to a Facebook account and the ability to send money to friends via messages.

“With Facebook Messenger, you attach money just like you attach a photo or a location. You don’t even have to link a bank account!” explains Andrew Aude on Twitter, a Stanford University student who discovered the service buried in the current Facebook Messenger iPhone app.

The app appears to have a pin function to protect payments; payments are handled in a similar way to photos and videos while sending messages. However the leaked details from the Messenger app do not indicate that Facebook will follow Google and Apple with a payment system that would allow users to pay for goods and services at stores, like a credit or debit card.

Facebook’s focus on payment services is expected to be the remittance market - worth around $500bn, according to the World Bank.

What Google does next

Mobile payments are certainly on all radars right now. Last month, Omid Kordestani, Google’s Chief Business Officer, was asked at the internet giant’s third quarter earnings conference call about the master plan for mobile payments. Kordestani's said that Google needed more merchant and bank partners as well as near field communication (NFC) devices in the field. He seemed to be acknowledging that Google's payment approach needs to be more user friendly.

NFC is a short-range wireless technology that makes use of interacting electromagnetic radio fields instead of the typical direct radio transmissions used by technologies such as Bluetooth. It’s the system used by Apple Pay but Google's Android supported NFC early on. 

What's unclear, however, is whether Google is moving quickly enough on the partnership front and is focused enough to effectively compete. The search giant is playing on multiple fields - cloud, express delivery, hardware, operating systems and that's not even counting wearables and robotic cars.

When asked about whether Google would partner on payments or build its own system, Kordestani had this to say: “I think our goal here is really achieving mass merchant adoption, so the availability of these NFC devices is about that and also making it easier for consumers to replace their wallets with their smartphones hopefully more and more over time.”

To do this, Google recognises the need to reduce friction in everyday shopping experiences. “We’re really developing a fully functional payment system,” Kordestani said which “means a two-fronted focus on merchant adoption and removing friction for users”.