Nonprofits next to test Facebook payment platform

NEW YORK--Four nonprofit organizations will be participating in a test of Facebook's "credits" platform, marketing and outreach director Randi Zuckerberg said on Friday morning at the Social Good Conference presented by social-media blog Mashable.

"I just received confirmation yesterday that...we're going to be reopening up charity gifts in the Gift Shop," said Zuckerberg (who is, yes, the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg). "We are exploring ways for developers to use the Gift Shop to offer...virtual, real, and charity gifts."

This will be rolling out next week with four test partners--Project Red, Kiva, Toms Shoes (which is not a non-profit, but a for-profit retailer that donates a pair of shoes for every pair sold), and the World Wildlife Fund--Zuckerberg said, and pending its success, "we may open to everyone really soon after that."

The blog Inside Facebook reported last week that four online gift and greeting companies--American Greetings Interactive, GreetBeatz, Someecards, and Real Gifts--would be selling virtual gifts in the Facebook gift shop as part of a test of the new "Pay with Facebook" virtual currency.

Facebook first offered "charity gifts" for a 48-hour window to commemorate the milestone of 200 million members. A total of 16 nonprofits and advocacy groups participated in the initiative.

The social network already uses "credits" to sell in-house and branded virtual gifts, a change it made last November (gifts had originally been listed in U.S. dollars). The extension of the system to third-party developers on Facebook's platform has been talked about for quite some time now but finally appears to be nearing a wider launch.

[bgitt]

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[mture]

I am very curious to see whether the nonprofits will simply get a cut of the revenue from the charity gifts offered in Facebook's Gift Shop, or whether Facebook will open up the Gift Shop so that charities can hook in to the gifts in a deeper fashion.

I started We Give (http://apps.facebook.com/we-give/) earlier this year to allow small charities to raise donations through digital gifts on Facebook (we're growing slowly!). The really engaging features to come later depend on more than just selling the gifts and stopping at the point of delivery.

I've heard that PayPal processes payments for Kiva's micro-loans for free. We Give also does not take any cut from the donations, although we use Amazon Payments, which does have transaction fees. Does Facebook plan to offer charities gifts for free, or will there be a transaction cost to them?

Very interesting developments in this space, indeed!

Kindly,
Mark

[luckyzhu]

I've heard that PayPal processes payments for Kiva's micro-loans for free. We Give also does not take any cut from the donations, although we use Amazon Payments, which does have transaction fees. Does Facebook plan to offer charities gifts for free, or will there be a transaction cost to them?

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[luckyzhu]

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