In an effort to expand into online commerce in regions outside of the U.S. and Canada — and get the ad dollars that go with it — Facebook will let small companies in emerging markets sell their products directly through their account pages for free.

Last year, Facebook launched a service that lets some vendors sell their wares through paid ads on the Facebook app. But this service will be free, Reuters reports, and purchases can be made right through the business’ Facebook page.

The idea here is that if Facebook can get more merchants to depend on it for business, they’ll possibly become advertisers.

Southeast Asia is gaining users faster than any other region, but Facebook makes more money off its users in the U.S. and Canada: the social network made an average revenue of $13.74 per North American user in the second quarter, in contrast to an average of $.174 per user in the Asia-Pacific area, Reuters says.

“If a business is seeing value from their page, there is a higher opportunity that they could be an advertiser,” said Benji Shomair, product marketing director of Facebook Pages, told Reuters.

Facebook to let emerging market companies sell through their pages [Reuters]

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