Jason Del Ray & Mike Isaac, reporting for re/code, say Twitter and Stripe are near a deal to allow Twitter to accept credit cards in some fashion.
I think they hit the nail on the head with their last paragraph:
Or another likely scenario: Twitter could integrate Stripe’s payment processing into its “Cards” technology, allowing retailers to accept purchases from inside the tweets themselves.
Twitter already sells the ability to have tweets promoted to the top of the trends list and directly into people’s timeline and searches. Right now this is done to help a tweet or photo or hashtag get some social juice. But imagine being able to sell / buy something directly in a tweet?
My friend Gary recently wrote a book. He tweeted about that book four-hundred-million-times. That’s OK. He’s allowed to do that. But, imagine if he simply tweeted once, paid Twitter to promote the tweet, asked his 1+ million followers to retweet it, and built directly into the tweet was a way to preorder it? All with a credit card kept on file with Twitter via Stripe’s amazing service? That’d be something.
Love Twitter. Love Stripe. I hope they make this happen.
Side thought: Why not Square?