Facebook is phasing out digital gift cards in favor for Buy Button

Social networking platform Facebook is sun setting its digital gift card service in favor of its new Buy button feature.

Beginning August 12^th, Facebook will no longer offer its gift card feature for firms like Apple’s iTunes and Starbucks. Instead the company will be relying on its new beta Buy feature giving users the ability to purchase goods and services directly through advertisements. Another social network, Twitter, is going down the same route, by fading out certain Ecommerce options in favor of a dedicated Buy button.

“We’ll be using everything we learned from Gifts to explore new ways to help businesses and developers drive sales on the web, on mobile, and directly on Facebook,” the company said in an Emailed statement.

According to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Ecommerce is becoming a large part of Facebook’s future business plans.

“The more people buy online, the more people buy things they discovered through their mobile phones, the more people discover things from a News Feed and go on to purchase, the more important we are in driving e-commerce,” Sandberg stated during an investors call.

Facebook’s Buy Button is currently being tested in the US in cooperation with certain SMBs. No word yet on how long the testing period will be, but if the company is talking about ending previous services, we accept it to be in the very near future.

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