“SNS Pay is a service that integrates support for sharing, billing, and marketing products registered on social media. Implementing a system to allow payments with the same UI/UX and social media.”

“South Korea is among the countries with the highest proportion of active social media users. Its current population is 51,118,262 as of March 31, based on the latest United Nations’ estimate. According to data from Statista, 84% of the population are active social media users.”

South Korea based cryptocurrency exchange ‘Bithumb’ have announced plans for social media integration into their current cryptocurrency exchange platform. Bithumb have recently developed new partnerships with payment processing companies in the USA and South Korea so therefore, this move adds a new chapter to the story of Bithumb’s incredible progress and development. At present, Bithumb handles around $250million in volume per day, a staggering amount of money in the grand scheme of things. Bithumbs social network payment solution has been named ‘SNS Pay’ and will; provide a peer to peer payment system through social media. The specific mediums themselves have not been named. According to Bithumb:[sic]. The service will essentially allow users to pay for items and services available through social media through cryptocurrencies . Take Facebook ’s marketplace for example, the operation would be similar to this, only SNS Pay could intervene and offer users an alternative payment method. Similarly, you can refer to this example in the instance that SNS Pay is used within Facebooks games for example. https://news.bitcoin.com/uploads/2018/04/bithumb-social-media-696x427.jpg This image, was released by Bithumb in an attempt to allow users to visualise how SNS Pay will work. Essentially, Bithumb acts as the external system which links together all of the major social networks (pictured). Whilst there has been no official statement from the networks listed in the image, it does seem to suggest that all of the major social networks would be included in this, including Facebook & Instagram, Twitter and Google (Youtube, Google Plus etc). Why are Bithumb exploring this avenue? Well, obviously, social media integration through SNS Pay has worldwide implications, importantly though, according to Bitcoin.com:Therefore, as a major exchange operating within South Korea, it only makes sense for Bithumb to try and take advantage of these statistics. Clearly, social media covers a huge area of the internet both in South Korea and across the rest of the world, therefore it is important for cryptocurrency exchanges to try and get involved in it, if they want to stay on trend and remain as a key part of the technical revolution we currently exist within. Bithumb and SNS Pay could very well spearhead a new movement towards cryptocurrency adoption within social networks, or it could actually just become an exclusive concept, designed for the many but only used by the few.