ONCE Facebook was for social interaction, friendship and media-sharing; now it's morphing into a venue for serious pursuits such as paying bills.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Friend request: help pay my bill
This process took another step yesterday when Telstra released a Facebook application that lets customers top up pre-paid mobile accounts from their Facebook home page -- while they continue to interact with friends.
The app also makes use of the Facebook friends network -- some might say controversially -- by offering a button that lets a customer ask a friend to help pay their bill.
The plea for credit can appear on their wall. Telstra customers then use the Credit Me2U to transfer money from one pre-paid account to another.
Telstra Mobile executive director Warwick Bray said: "In just a few clicks, customers can use the app to check their balance information, recharge with a stored debit or credit card and view up to 180 days of usage and recharge history.
"And should a customer run out of credit, they can ask their mates for a top-up using the 'request credit from friends' feature, which provides the option to put a call out on their Facebook wall or via a direct message."
Users search for and download the application, install it, and verify their mobile phone account. The bill-paying facility then appears as a link on their Facebook homepage.
Telstra said the app pointed to "a future where all types of transactions are embedded in the world's most popular social network".
"This is part of Telstra's strategy to improve customer satisfaction by making it more convenient for people to manage their mobile services at a time and location that suites them," the telco said.
Its new app coincides with Facebook's revamping of its application network. In a developer's blog post yesterday, Facebook said it would open its own app centre, where users could download free and paid apps and run them from within their Facebook account. Apps could be accessed in a browser, or from apps on Apple/Android devices.
While apps have been part of Facebook for years, the difference is their organisation into a single online location and their categorisation into genres.
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