By Andrew R. Johnson
Discover Financial Services (DFS) will help process transactions
made with new gift cards that social-networking company Facebook
Inc. (FB) has begun selling on its website.
Facebook said Thursday its users are now able to buy gift cards
on its site and have them delivered to their friends for use at
physical merchants.
Currently, the gift cards can be used at Jamba Inc.'s (JMBA)
Jamba Juice, Darden Restaurants Inc.'s (DRI) Olive Garden, LVMH
Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA's (LVMUY, MC.FR) Sephora and Target
Corp. (TGT). Individual cards can store balances for multiple
merchants, Facebook said. The cards are being offered through
Facebook's "Gifts" platform that allows users to purchase virtual
and physical goods with their payment cards on the site and have
them sent to their friends.
A Facebook representative didn't immediately respond to a
request for comment Thursday.
Discover, which offers credit cards directly to consumers and
operates a payments network that competes with Visa Inc. (V) and
MasterCard Inc. (MA), said transactions made with the
Facebook-branded gift cards will run over its processing
network.
The deal is Discover's latest move to align with technology
companies that are targeting the lucrative payments business.
The Riverwoods, Ill., company last year struck a deal with eBay
Inc.'s (EBAY) PayPal unit. Under that relationship, Discover will
equip the more than 7 million merchants that already accept its
cards to also accept PayPal as a payment option when checking
out.
It also has been heavily promoting Google Inc.'s (GOOG) digital
wallet, which allows consumers to load credit- and debit-card
information in to a mobile application. That mobile app can then be
used to pay for transactions in physical stores by tapping a
smartphone equipped with a special computer chip against a
merchant's payment terminal.
Such deals allow Discover to "deploy our infrastructure in a
unique way," Diane Offereins, executive vice president of payment
services for Discover, said in an interview. She declined to
discuss the economic arrangement between Facebook and Discover.
Write to Andrew R. Johnson at andrew.r.johnson@dowjones.com
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