Facebook launched Internet Financial Services

The Bank of Ireland will soon approve Facebook's offer of deposits and currency exchange to users, sources said. While Facebook's plans remain unclear, regulators are right to allow more experimentation.

The report says Facebook will focus on the bank's remittance market. The World Bank expects global remittances to exceed $600 billion trillion in 2014, most of them in developing countries, more than three times times more than a decade ago. This data is more than three times times higher than the global aid budget. However, the cost of the remittance business amounted to 9%, which is clearly on the high side. Facebook's involvement could cause a rapid decline in remittance service fees.

Not only does a Facebook company want to enter the Internet financial market. Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, launched a service last week to allow money-free transfers to 4,000 U.S. retail outlets without bank accounts.

Whether Facebook's new service will make cross-border remittances as convenient as video or photos is still unknown. However, the company's remittance business fees may be much lower than the existing service fees, because Facebook can use its own size and low-cost advantage, to charge users far less than the traditional bank transfer fees. Wal-Mart has previously said the company's fee-transfer service is half as low as some of its competitors ' fees.

The banking industry is undergoing a revolution that has already been self-evident. There are now hundreds of millions of people around the world using mobile applications to transfer money, but in developing markets, 2.5 billion people still do not have access to banking services. For these people, Facebook's Internet financial services are not just as simple as making the money they send home fees cheaper. If Facebook allows these users to set up accounts, apply for loans, pay wages, pay bills and invest, Facebook will definitely be able to get the support of a large number of users.