TheCable

Chris Cox, chief product officer of Facebook, says the social networking company is now accepting payment for advertisement in naira.

According to NAN, Cox disclosed this at an interactive session with journalists in Lagos, on Monday.

He said the decision was one of the requests made of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, when he visited Nigeria in 2016.

“In response, Facebook has started accepting locally issued Nigerian naira cards from new advertisers for payments on its ads platform,” he said.

“With 8.6 million people in Nigeria using Facebook on mobile every day, Facebook is a great place for businesses to reach their customers and market their products and services.

“We are listening to our community of partners, developers, advertisers and content creators to understand what we can build to best serve their needs.”

He said Facebook had been working to offer new payment options to make its ads more accessible for all advertisers.

Cox also said Facebook would kick off ‘Boost Your Business’, a series of free training sessions, from March 8, 2017.

He explained that the training sessions were designed to help thousands of Nigerian small business owners understand how to leverage digital platforms for growth.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said the company has over four million advertisers, which signifies the growing importance of mobile to consumers and marketers.

Sandberg said while majority of advertisers on Facebook were small and medium-size businesses, many small businesses still needed to catch up.