Earlier this week Facebook announced that PayPal president David Marcus will be joining the social media giant as the VP for “Messaging Products.”

David is a most excellent hire. He is an entrepreneur who started the mobile payment platformZong. PayPal aquired Zong and with it David’s incredible knowledge and experience into the payment field.

Payments have become increasingly important to startups and established business alike — holding billions — even trillions — in profit potential. Notwithstanding all the mobile money, mobile wallet, or digital wallet applications such as Square, Venmo, the struggling Clinkle, and the one that has taken Africa by storm — Kenya’s M-Pesa, a number of tech companies demonstrate how and why payments are the next big thing.

Amazon’s “One-Click” has yielded tremendous dividends for the online marketplace. Though Uber is fighting taxi and limousine services throughout major cities, its true value add is in how it has integrated payments into its service offerings. Alibaba, which is about to go public in the United States in one of the world’s biggest IPOs at $150 billion, owes a huge part of its success on its payments solution AliPay.

Making it easier for people to pay for things seamlessly — without bungling around with credit cards and routing numbers — is a much needed solution.

Back in April, the Financial Times reported that Facebook planned to experiment with online payments starting in Ireland. Hiring David Marcus might be an extension of an overall effort to integrate a payments platform on Facebook. (Re/Code thinks so too.) With WhatsApp — a mobile platform, Facebook has the mechanism to roll out a payment platform. If it can make it easy for its users to make purchases online… watch out Amazon….