Twitter announced a new buying system in the works for users today with the aim to make shopping on a mobile device more seamless. Partnered brands, artists, and charities such as Burberry, Eminem, and (RED) will begin to tweet special offers and merchandise with a "Buy" button that will allow you to purchase the product directly from the tweet. Since this is in the testing phase, only a percentage of U.S. users will see this new purchase method, and the user will need to follow brand in order to see the special offering.
It appears that Twitter is working with online payment startup Stripe, as pointed out by Re/code, to secure credit card and billing information. Once you make your first purchase through this new buying initiative, your payment information is encrypted and stored so additional purchases can be made more easily. Twitter goes on to say that "your credit card is processed securely and won’t be shared with the seller without your permission."
A Virtual Strip Mall
I believe Twitter is building up to make a virtual strip mall, but with the advantage of having only stores that users want to see and shop from. This can be a powerful revenue medium for Twitter, which has been trying to find ways to monetize its service outside of traditional advertising methods of sponsored tweets. Using this new approach, however, users will be able to build up their own custom strip mall and see what they want to be sold by following the brands they want to buy from. If this testing phase goes well and more brands hop on board to increase their own revenue streams, the 271 million active users Twitter reported on in Q3 of 2014 will begin to look quite valuable as this new initiative is pushed out to more users later in the year.
Source: Twitter