Innovation in mobile money is all around us, but we’ve written here on Mobile Money Transactions a few times that one of the companies to watch is Facebook. They have a functional currency in use (the Facebook Credit System), they have ways of bringing money into the system either direct through deposits or via in-store gift cards, and they are a trusted brand on millions of mobile devices around the world.

Now they’ve went public on their plans to pair up the Credits system with all those mobile handsets around the globe.

Speaking at Mobile World Congress, CTO Bret Taylor, he pointed out their work with numerous (unspecified) carriers and their work to make mobile web payments easier. If Facebook’s goal is to connect people, then a lot of that connection will involve money. In theory the money will be moved by Facebook (who will have their rake when they pay out to app developers), the carriers will take a transaction cut, and the users will have paid via Facebook, a trusted brand.

It all seems so simple.

Yet when you think about how much more data that will let Facebook gather, and how much influence they have in directing traffic through their algorithms for the news feed on your Facebook homepage, you can see where there is even more value for Facebook to get involved.

As we said before…. watch Zuckerberg’s company.