最近，Facebook与社交支付平台公司PlaySpan达成协议，希望世界各地更多用户使用Facebook网站的专用虚拟货币Facebook Credits。

Facebook Credits的产品经营经理Deborah Liu在旧金山Virtual Goods Summit中提到，Facebook公司之所以与PalySpan的合作是因为两家公司都愿意将Facebook Credits推广到更多的Facebook应用中。

Facebook Credits

Facebook Credits是一款虚拟货币，用户可以通过信用卡或其他支付方式购买，然后用它购买社交游戏中的虚拟商品。在每笔交易中，Facebook将得到交易中30%的份额。而作为回报，Facebook承诺会帮助应用开发公司吸引更多的用户。

现在，社交网站Facebook上75家社交游戏开发商的200多款社交游戏都在使用Facebook Credit。而其中的22款游戏是排名前25的热门社交游戏。

现在，除了使用信用卡以外，用户通过PlaySPan公司的Ultimate Pay服务可以选择20种新型支付方式。因为信用卡不能在多个国家使用，PlaySpan公司就发布了能在特定地区使用的多种支付方式。这将有利于为Facebook游戏提供更广泛的玩家基础。

在接下来的几个月中除了现有的信用卡支付，手机付费服务以外，PlaySpan还将发布新的支付方式。通过Ultimate Pay服务，用户可以使用PaySafeCard, 欧洲Wallie-card, MyCard和台湾Gash cards等预付卡付款，另外还有各种地区支付服务。

Liu表示，Facebook公司希望将Facebook Credit打造成为一款国际虚拟货币，玩家不论身在何国都可以用其来购买虚拟商品。就像欧洲统一使用欧元，扩大了国家之间的贸易往来。Facebook也希望玩家能在不同的游戏、不同的国家使用Facebook Credits。毕竟Facebook网站用户中有70%在美国境外。

另外，最近很多游戏需要注册、登录然后才能支付购买虚拟货币。如果玩家每玩一款游戏都要重复以上动作，玩家花费现实货币的意愿可能因此降低。毕竟购买虚拟商品有很多时候都是玩家的一时起义。

尽管现在玩家们已经有多种支付方式的选择，但今天Facebook的重点是目标是向世界各地的Facebook用户提供最为便捷的Credits购买方式。PlaySpan的支付服务现已被1000多款游戏采用。

休闲游戏发行公司Arkadium的总裁Jessica Rovello表示，自己公司旗下也有5款游戏使用Facebook Credits。而且引入Facebook Credit后公司的盈利提高了几倍，很多免费玩家也变成了付费玩家。这些收入完全能支付Facebook30%的抽成。

同样，Digital Chocolate旗下的社交游戏Millionaire City也使用了Facebook Credits。该公司的合伙人Thomas Chung也承认Facebook Credits的引入使其公司的游戏收入增长了数倍，玩家也更愿意为虚拟游戏道具买单。

最后，Liu表示Facebook现在正致力于让更多的游戏开发商加入Facebook Credits项目，他们的目标是此前的4到5倍。（本文由游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）

Facebook has teamed up with social monetization firm PlaySpan to expand its reach to more users around the globe for its Facebook Credits virtual currency.

Deborah Liu (pictured below, right), manager of product marketing for Facebok Credits, said in a talk at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco that the deal with PlaySpan coincides with a big expansion of the use of Facebook Credits across Facebook’s social apps.

Facebook Credits is a virtual currency. Users can buy it with credit cards or other payment methods and then use the credits to purchase virtual goods in social games, such as fuel for tractors in Zynga’s FarmVille game on Facebook. Facebook keeps a 30 percent stake in every transaction. In return, it promises to deliver more liquidity and user participation in transactions for its app partners.

More than 75 developers are using Facebook Credits in 200 games on Facebook now, Liu said. Twenty two of the top 25 games use Facebook Credits.

Now, beyond using credit cards, users will be able to choose from 20 new payment options via PlaySpan’s Ultimate Pay service, allowing for more international purchases. Since credit cards aren’t used in every country, PlaySpan offers more payment options that are used in certain regions. That expands the reach of Facebook games — and the ability to make money from them through credits purchases — to a wider audience.

The PlaySpan payment options will roll out in the coming months, supplementing current payment systems such as credit cards, mobile phone payment services, and PayPal. Through Ultimate Pay, some of the new options include prepaid cards such as PaySafeCard, Wallie-card in Europe, MyCard and Gash cards in Taiwan, and other regional payment services.

Liu said the goal is to make Facebook Credits into an international virtual currency, where you can use it to buy for virtual goods wherever you are. The analogy is Europe’s euro, the currency whose introduction resulted in the broadening of trade beyond country borders. Facebook wants users to take its virtual currency and make purchases across many different apps and in many different countries. Roughly 70 percent of Facebook’s users are outside the U.S.

Currently, many games require you to register, log in and then pay for your currency. If you had to do that every time you played a game, you would be less likely to spend money, since virtual currency purchases are often spur-of-the moment decisions, much like cash purchases.

With literally hundreds of different online purchase options currently available to consumers, today’s news is inline with Facebook’s aim is to make it as convenient and simple as possible for people around the world to buy Facebook Credits, the virtual currency for games and applications on Facebook Platform. PlaySpan’s payment and other monetization services are used in more than 1,000 games.

Jessica Rovello (pictured, left), president of casual game publisher Arkadium, said that her company is using Facebook Credits in five games on Facebook today. Rovello said that her company had doubled its revenue from those games after introducing Facebook Credits in them. That more than makes up for the 30 percent fee that Facebook takes on the transactions.

Digital Chocolate, meanwhile is using Facebook Credits in its Millionaire City game. Thomas Chung (pictured, middle), director of partnerships at Digital Chocoloate, said his company also saw a several-times increase in conversion, or the percentage of players who convert from free game play to paying for something in the game.

Liu said that Facebook will now add four or five times as many developers to the Facebook Credits program than it was doing before.（Source：venturebeat）