The Collison brothers’ e-payments company Stripe is among a number of partners working with Twitter on a new ‘buy’ button it is testing that allows consumers to buy directly from a tweet.
Twitter has partnered with Stripe, Fancy, Gumroad and Musictoday for the initial test with additional partners to follow.
“This is an early step in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun,” Twitter group product manager Tarun Jain explained.
“Users will get access to offers and merchandise they can’t get anywhere else and can act on them right in the Twitter apps for Android and iOS; sellers will gain a new way to turn the direct relationship they build with their followers into sales.”
Trust and security
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Pictured: Patrick and John Collison
Twitter said it built the test experience with security and trust to the fore.
Payment and shipping information is encrypted and safely stored after the first transaction so users don’t need to input information again.
Twitter is working with a number of artist, brands and non-profit organisations whose offers will start appearing in Twitter feeds in the coming weeks.
These include Burberry, Eminem, Global Citizen, the Home Depot, Megadeth, Pharrell, RED, Ryan Adams, Soundgarden and 9/11 Day to name a few.
The Collison brothers were in the news recently when they partook in the creation of a new crypto-currency called Stellar into which they ploughed US$3m of their own money.
Stripe raised US$80m in January in a Series C funding round that has valued the company at US$1.75bn.
Patrick (25) and John (23) Collison sold their first company Auctomatic to Canadian firm Live Current Media for US$5m (€3.2m) when they were 17 and 19, respectively. More recently, the pair have been listed among five Irishmen on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
