While mobile advertising revenue drove Facebook to a banner first quarter, it is the company’s payments performance that is now taking center stage — and remains a bit of a bugaboo. FB payments revenue, including “fees,” dropped to $237 million last quarter from $241 million in the last quarter of 2013, although it is 11.3% higher than 1Q13. However, Facebook, the world’s largest social network, explained that payments from games is an important component of its payments revenue, and the growth rate of those revenues dropped to just 1% from 8% in the last quarter of 2013. Here’s how FB explained it: As we’ve discussed before, the shift to mobile is a significant headwind since our Games Payments revenue comes from desktop only, where usage is flat or declining, so growing this business going forward will be challenging. That could be why payments was the very first question of yesterday’s FB earnings call, as Heather Bellini of Goldman Sachs & Co. asked “… Mark or Sheryl, if you can share with us your vision of payments for Facebook, and how the company might be able to play a role in reducing the friction that exists today when users are trying to engage […]
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