Microblogging site Twitter and banking institution American Express have joined forces to add an e-Commerce component to the social media website. Both companies have been working on a system that will allow American Express users to pay for goods over Twitter.
The service allows users to link their American Express card to their Twitter accounts and pay for them with tweets. “Now when you sync your eligible American Express Card with Twitter you can turn your Tweets into exclusive offers loaded directly to your Card. No coupons. No printouts. Sync, Tweet and Save,” Amex said on their website.
In order for the service to work, users will have synchronize their cards with their account first. “American Express can turn your Tweets into exclusive Cardmember offers loaded directly to your Card. Sync your eligible American Express Card at https://sync.americanexpress.com/twitter. Tweet the special offer #hashtags to load offers directly to your Card, and save with an automatic statement credit when you make a qualified purchase in store or online with your synced Card,” it explained.
According to The Guardian, the partnership could open a new revenue stream for Twitter. “That could generate a chunk of payments for Twitter if it takes a slice of those purchases. But the service, with more than 200 million users worldwide, is also beginning to ratchet up prices for reaching users: last week it raised the price of a “promoted trend” – visible to many users as they look to see what topics are generating the most interest – to $200,000 per day,” the publication wrote.
It is also reported that American Express is working on similar systems to work in conjunction with Facebook, Microsoft’s Xbox Live service and the location-based service FourSquare.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
