New patents suggest Snapchat is entering the mobile payments market

Snapchat may take a leaf out of Asia’s messaging app playbook when it comes to making money, after two potentially telling trademark filings were unearthed. TechCrunch dug up filings related to processing electronic payments and money transfers. There’s an obvious joke here about ephemeral money transfers, but actually these filings are evidence of plans to monetize Snapchat using models that are successful outside of the US. Snapchat counts Tencent as an investor and CEO Evan Spiegel is said to “frequently” speak to the Chinese internet giant, which operates hugely successful chat app WeChat. The service has nearly 400 million active users and is akin to Facebook in China, where, importantly, payments, and peer-to-peer money transfers are among its many features.

Snappay? Snapchat may try to monetize by processing peer-to-peer payments, money transfers, or online payments, according to two trademarks it filed earlier this week. Owned by Snapchat and filed on July 11th by an attorney at Cooley, which is known to be Snapchat’s law firm, the trademarks could keep anyone else from entering the same space under the Snapchat name. After being tipped off to the trademarks by a source, I’ve contacted Snapchat and am awaiting a response regarding what exactly these trademarks are about. Laugh it up all you want about Snapchat making your money disappear, this could be serious business. Until now, speculation about Snapchat’s monetization routes has focused around advertising, in-app purchases of virtual goods, and sponsorships from brands for promoting live events. These trademarks paint a different picture. It’s not the only one that might look to earn money on messaging through money transfers. Facebook recently hired PayPal President David Marcus to head up its Messenger division. Snapchat has done some staffing of its own on the monetization front. It hired Instagram’s head of business Emily White as COO in late 2013, and last month poached Facebook’s Global Director of its Preferred Marketing Developer program Mike Randall to be Snapchat’s VP Of Business And Marketing Partnerships.