By Besta Shankar: Subscribe to Besta's RSS feed
July 9, 2010 11:03 AM EDT
Taking a cue from online businesses of Apple Inc.'s iTunes store and Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc., on Thursday announced a partnership with MOL Global, a Malaysian online-payment company, allowing its members to buy credits from more than 500,000 retail outlets across Asia.
The partnership enables the Facebook members to conveniently buy virtual goods in online games and applications of Facebook. Facebook Credits enable users to buy and spend virtual currency in more than 150 applications on Facebook. Over 70 percent of its members are involved with applications monthly.
The partnership makes purchasing Facebook Credits, a virtual currency used for online games and applications, more convenient in Asia, where consumers rely heavily on offline prepaid cards rather than credit cards to purchase digital goods and services, a company statement said.
The agreement allows MOL Global’s wholly-owned subsidiary MOL AccessPortal to be a payment provider for Facebook Credits. Members of Facebook can purchase the credits from MOLPoints on Facebook and on MOL’s website MOL.com.
Starting from August, Facebook users can obtain the credits using MOL points purchased through MOL’s network of more than 500,000 outlets, situated mainly in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, India, Australia and New Zealand. The members are also provided with the facility of obtaining the credits through MOL’s network of online banks in these countries.
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"We're investing in the long-term future of Facebook Credits and we view this agreement as a major opportunity to broaden the availability of a simple, unified currency that can be used in games and applications across Facebook," said Vaughan Smith, Facebook's director of business and corporate development.
"This partnership continues MOL's momentum to build the largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network in Asia," said MOL Global's chief executive, Ganesh Kumar Bangah.
In December 2009, MOL acquired Friendster Inc., a California-based a social networking site with 115 million members globally of which more than 65 percent of the members were from Asia. MOL handles over 60 million transactions with an annual payment volume of $200 million.
The partnership comes in the wake of rapidly increasing user base of Facebook. Facebook witnessed a vast growth in users from 200 million to 500 million globally in the past 15 months. Nearly 70 percent of the users are present outside the US mainly in English-speaking countries such as Britain and Australia. Mostly blocked in China, the social networking site is behind the domestic social networks in countries like Japan, South Korea and Russia.
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