Ven, by Hub Culture. Payments. Facebook has released more details about Frictionless Payments and Buy With Friends — two new ways to spend its virtual currency Facebook Credits that it announced out our Inside Social Apps 2011 conference last week.
Buy With Friends stories will only appear to users who play the game hosting the deal, and instructions for how developers can implement the two features has been added to the Credits API documentation. Frictionless Payments Implementation Frictionless Payments allows users to spend up to 30 Credits within a game without interrupting play with an “Are you sure?’ Dialog. Users don’t have to go through the standard Credits interface, but instead make purchases directly through the game’s UI.
Payments. Over the past year, Facebook has steadily worked to make Credits the only payments option on its platform, but has given few specifics details on what it’s doing during the transition.
Below, we take a fresh look at Facebook, its top developers and the platform providers to help clear up where Credits will go in 2011. Although it has never said so explicitly and publicly, Facebook has required, one by one, all major developers to sign five-year agreements agreeing to use Credits exclusively. That’s instead of the direct credit card payments, third-party offer walls, game cards, and other payment options that have until now been the main ways to buy virtual currency for social games and apps on the platform.
Facebook’s initial plan was to fully transition to Credits by the end of 2010, but the results might not be obvious today. For example, the two largest games on the platform — CityVille and FarmVille — show an offer wall, game cards, and a variety of other non-Credits payment methods.