You would think that with 1.155 billion active users by the end of last quarter, Facebook would be raking in the payments revenue. You would be wrong. The company — which today AllThingsD disclosed will reboot its payments strategy with a test of a PayPal-like service starting next month — has been struggling to keep its payments business on pace with its advertising revenue. Last quarter, Facebook generated about $214 million of payments revenue, around 12% of the company’s total revenue. On the surface, that’s not a bad number. Year-over-year, Facebook grew that revenue line 11%. But scratch the surface, and you can see why Facebook, presumably a growth company, is actively trying to figure out payments. On a quarterly basis, revenue growth was effectively 0%. That compares to advertising, which in 2Q grew 28% on a quarterly basis and 61% on an annual basis. Payments is clearly not keeping pace at Facebook. In the first quarter of 2012, 18% of Facebook’s total revenue came from payments. However, the percentage of payments revenue has declined since to the 12% recorded last quarter. There’s another arguably more disturbing payments number out of Facebook. The company simply cannot get the average Facebook user [...]
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