Twitter Favorites CardSpring for Social Commerce

In a well timed push, Twitter has announced its acquisition of startup payment technology provider, CardSpring. CardSpring is an online service that makes it easy for local merchants to connect card-linked marketing programs from leading web and mobile companies to their business. The company’s API helps developers write applications that accept credit card payments and create card-linked promotions such as digital coupons, virtual rewards, and loyalty programs.

Nathan Hubbard, Twitter’s newly appointed head of commerce, reports on the company blog “As we work on the future of commerce on Twitter, we’re confident the CardSpring team and the technology they’ve built are a great fit with our philosophy regarding the best ways to bring in-the-moment commerce experiences to our users.’

Twitter has already started connecting tweets to mobile payments opportunities to enable social commerce, working with American Express, Amazon and Starbucks to push offers through online shopping carts even allowing friends to buy each other drinks with a tweet.

”Twitter has always been a vibrant environment for users to discover product recommendations and promotions from artists, experts, brands and friends. In fact, we’ve already given users the ability to get deals and discounts, surprise someone with a coffee, or even add items to their online shopping cart, all directly from a Tweet. As we work on the future of commerce on Twitter, we’re confident the CardSpring team and the technology they’ve built are a great fit with our philosophy regarding the best ways to bring in-the-moment commerce experiences to our users.”

Twitter rival Facebook is testing a “buy” button on browsers and mobile devices that lets users make purchases through advertisements, the world’s largest social network said in a blog post yesterday.

The payments industry is beginning to get hot with two of the largest media platforms in the world making a headlong push to merge social media with sales and marketing. The possibilities are ripe for the these two social behemoths to pluck major fruit from mobile marketers.