As more companies jostle for a piece of the payments pie, Facebook has decided on an unlikely strategy: win by giving in.

Visa and MasterCard are so dominant in payments that new entrants have struggled to compete. Most players piggyback on the credit card processors’ network. They typically charge merchants fees in addition to those levied by the card companies, and that has made it hard for them to gain traction.

Facebook’s new strategy, which has gone largely unnoticed, forgoes being a transactions middleman in favor of leveraging the site’s strength, connecting people, in this case merchants and shoppers.