Facebook and Twitter turn up the effort to make it easier to buy online

In its blog post Facebook said, “We’ve built this feature with privacy in mind, and have taken steps to help make the payment experience safe and secure. None of the credit or debit card information people share with Facebook when completing a transaction will be shared with other advertisers, and people can select whether or not they’d like to save payment information for future purchases.”

Twitter also had its own piece of marketing news: it plans to acquire CardSpring, a San Francisco-based startup that allows developers to write applications for credit cards, discount coupons and other payment systems.

Its platform is aimed at linking e-commerce with brick-and-mortar sales. Online shoppers can collect sales offers, synch them with their credit card and then collect them at stores.

For Twitter, the company offers an existing payments infrastructure that is not built solely around impulse purchases.

The news of the intended acquisition, announced in a blog post, marks one of the first public statements from Twitter about its commerce plans.

It had been expected that both social-media companies would venture into e-commerce offerings to boost revenue, moves that pit them against the major credit card companies as well as Apple and Google.

With CardSpring, Twitter is demonstrating that it is a serious contender with Facebook, said Tim Dunn, director of strategy and mobile at digital agency Isobar. "Twitter is really being much more aggressive in commerce," he told Adweek.

Facebook, with more than 1.2 billion users, has tried enabling purchases on its social network in the past, with limited success.

Facebook Credits, a virtual currency that let users make purchases within games, was abandoned in 2012.

Twitter last year hired Ticketmaster executive Nathan Hubbard to explore ways to let people purchase goods directly from Tweets.

The San Francisco-based company also recently signed a deal with Amazon, the largest online retailer, to let Twitter members shop by hashtag.

The company also has commerce ties with Starbucks and American Express.

In a blog post, Hubbard described CardSpring as "a great fit with our philosophy regarding the best ways to bring in-the-moment commerce experiences to our users." CardSpring's staff of fourteen employees will be joining Twitter.