Facebook Shares Rise on Optimism for Banking Relationships

Facebook’s shares rose on optimism that the company is forging deeper relationships with banks to offer customer-service products via its Messenger chat application, according to Bloomberg.

Facebook has for years worked to make Messenger a natural place for consumers to communicate with businesses, aiming to replace email. Customers who opt in can already receive some airline boarding passes and receipts from PayPal transactions on Messenger. To do the same with major banks, Facebook has been trying to convince them that the conversations will be secure and customers’ personal data won’t be used in advertising.

A Wall Street Journal report said the talks with banks are ongoing, sending shares up as much as 4 percent. The company has started to feel more urgency to make money from its properties beyond the Facebook social network. Some users may be wary of sharing especially sensitive financial details.

Still, Facebook has been building up user comfort with sharing financial information through its site for years. It already allows money transfer between friends and e-commerce transactions with businesses through Messenger. It also lets people buy and sell items through Marketplace. And those on Facebook have become more comfortable using their credit cards in the news feed because of a product that enables people to ask their friends to donate to charitable causes.

Facebook’s person-to-person payments capability inside Messenger ranked below similar offerings from Square, Apple and PayPal in a review from Consumer Reports. Facebook’s payments product was given lower than average marks on data privacy, which measures data control, collection, retention and deletion. However, Facebook received good marks for “offering detailed terms of service and end-user agreements that explain how they use consumers’ data,“ Consumer Reports said.