Facebook Credits to be mandatory for social games from July

Facebook has announced that as of July 1, social game developers using the service will be required to adopt Facebook Credits as one of their payment channels. It’s currently being used by at least 350 games from 150 developers.

Despite being in beta for the past several months, Facebook Credits has made up more than 70% of transaction volume on the social networking site. Similar to Apple’s App Store scheme, Facebook developers will keep 70% of the revenue from each transaction while the remainder goes to Facebook. Seems that social networking is yet another industry that Apple’s influence has made a mark on.

According to the announcement, developers who have adopted Facebook Credits as their in-game currency have seen increases in gross revenue and in revenue per user. It claims to also have made games more seamless and enjoyable. According to those who have participated, which include Zynga, DigitalChocolate, PopCap, Playfish, among others, Facebook Credits will do fine — as Qui-Gon Jinn once said.

While developers are free to arrange for other payment channels in addition to Facebook Credits, those who adopt the scheme exclusively will receive special incentives such as, “early access to product features and premium promotion on Facebook, including featured placement on the Games Dashboard, premium targeting for ads, and access to new co-promotion opportunities.”

To qualify for the incentives, Facebook has outlined three criteria:

• Facebook Credits should be the game’s premium currency
• All virtual goods available for purchase with premium currency are priced in Facebook Credits. However, goods can be available through earned currency
• Items are not priced in local currency or another in-game premium currency

Since Facebook has integrated various forms of payments into its system, such credit cards, PayPal, mobile payments, redeemable vouchers and others, it’s therefore more likely for users to adopt Credits. All they need to do is input their details once and they’ll be free to roam through all their games and make the necessary purchases.

Of course, all this means everyone, from kids to parents, will require a much closer scrutiny on what they do on Facebook as financial transactions becomes not much more than a click away.

While currently Credits is open only for games, the opportunity to integrate it with other categories remains wide open and it’s not inconceivable that Facebook will implement Credits for any and all transactions in the future. It may even supplant PayPal as the top online payment method should the platform open up to individuals.

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