Twitter today announced a new feature that will allow customers to buy products direct from a Twitter feed. This new feature has been created in partnership with Silicon Valley based Irish payments firm Stripe.

Twitter which lags behind Facebook and Google with their advertising revenue wants to allow companies to begin selling products and services within Twitter streams.

Stripe, now valued at $1.3 billion was founded by Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison and raised $60 million earlier this year to fund their continued expansion.

This partnership with Twitter further demonstrates Stripe's position as one of the world's most important companies in the global online payments business.

The announcement came via a blog post from Twitter

“Today we are beginning to test a new way for you to discover and buy products on Twitter.”

“For a small percentage of US users that will grow over time, some Tweets from our test partners will feature a ‘Buy’ button, letting you buy directly from the Tweet. This is an early step in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun. Users will get access to offers and merchandise they can’t get anywhere else and can act on them right in the Twitter apps for Android and iOS. Sellers will gain a new way to turn the direct relationship they build with their followers into sales.”

“In our test, an entire purchase can be completed in just a few taps. After tapping the ‘Buy’ button, you will get additional product details and be prompted to enter your shipping and payment information. Once that’s entered and confirmed, your order information is sent to the merchant for delivery.

“We’re not building this alone: we’ve partnered with Fancy, Gumroad, Musictoday and Stripe as platforms for this initial test, with more partners to follow soon.

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Earlier this summer Stripe signed a deal with Chinese payments company Alipay that gives access to the enormous and growing Chinese market. Currently one billion people excluding China own credit cards that can be used with Stripe’s payments system.

Investors who have backed Stripe in a big way include Peter Thiel, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Khosla Ventures.

In August, Fox News President Rupert Murdoch described the Collisons as "brilliant" and Stripe as "outstanding".

Stripe is continuing to expand globally with Australia the latest country to be added that can now use its online payments system. The Stripe payment system is also operating in Ireland, Britain, the US and Canada. In addition there is an 'open beta' version of the system operating in seven additional countries.