Earlier this year, Facebook added a peer-to-peer aspect to the platform, allowing you to connect your bank account to Facebook and directly send money to other users via messenger. That’s pretty big in regards to lending; cutting out other platforms while not even taking something like a 3% cut, like the others do. Alright, so Facebook is moving in on the peer-to-peer front; they’re projected to grow into a $100 billion service. However, that’s old news; that happened back in July.
What we’re here to talk about today is Facebook’s first big step into the crowdfunding industry. They announced just this past week that they would be adding a donation button for non-profits to help them raise funding for the causes they support. This is important because of the way the fundraising system works right now. Currently, you need a lot of social media presence to really get a social issue some support. However, there is always the issue of losing people on the journey from your Facebook page to your crowdfunding page; some people are lazy, others will have bandwidth issues, distractions will arise, etc. Not only that, but there’s no current fee for the transactions (though they have said there will most likely be a minimal fee to cover their own costs in the future; still better than the up to 8% you can see on pure platforms). Additionally, Facebook is one of those places where internet sensations go viral. Where else would you expect to get the most support and notoriety on the internet and what better way to take advantage of that through ease of access with the donation feature?
While this does not directly affect those of us in Real Estate at the moment, it does have implications for the future. The next step is to help “For Profit” organizations/users crowdfund over social media and we’ve already seen that Facebook is willing to take the steps to keep up with the times by way of this new advancement and the peer to peer addition from the summer. This could someday mean more availability and less fees for our own crowdfunding purposes in real estate. It looks like the social media icons will be, at the very least, joining in the #Fintech craze, if not bumping out smaller platforms in both the crowdfunding and the peer to peer industry. This is good for those of us on the end user side, but watch out platforms, it looks like “something wicked this way comes.”
For more information, check out Josef Holm’s article on Crowdfund Beat
