18 Jul 2014

SELENA LARSON ReadWrite.com

Twitter wants to make it as easy to buy as it is to tweet. On Tuesday, the company announced the acquisition of CardSpring, a payments startup that makes it easy for developers to add payment services to apps and products.

The social media company has tried to capitalize on e-commerce with tweet-to-buy initiatives that have yet to gain visible steam.

The acquisition of CardSpring will add experts to Twitter's staff who have particular experience helping developers add payments features.

"The CardSpring team and the technology they’ve built are a great fit with our philosophy regarding the best ways to bring in-the-moment commerce experiences to our users," Twitter's head of commerce, Nathan Hubbard, wrote in a blog post.

Twitter's announcement comes on the heels of Facebook's push into payments earlier Thursday. The social network announced it is testing a buy button on pages and advertisements that will let people buy things directly in the social network, without clicking away to a separate online storefront. Twitter likely aims to do something similar.