Let's begin with the solid, hard facts. Sure, we all know that sites such as British Airways and Ticketmaster are reliable to use your credit card on, simply due to the fact of common knowledge, and the size of their companies. Surprisingly, people on Facebook are willing to share their credit card details in order to acquire a digital horse or helicopter for their online game. For a measly 25 cents, you can buy a plum tree in Farmville, a castle in Fishville will set you back $1.40, and dig as deep as $5.95 for a helicopter in MafiaWars. So far, only 1 to 4% of social network users actually buy these things. However, companies Boku and Zong, based in San Francisco and Palo Alto California respectively, are trying to make it easier for people to pay for these digital goodies, via the use of phone credit as a payment method. Up until now, Facebook charged these game development companies very little to use the site, but now, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants the same dividends that the iPhone apps give, a mere 30%.
This video just proves my overall point, in the fact that companies are making it much easier to use your credit card online, whereas before now the main reason some people don't use their card online is the fear of fraud. This has slowly become the new fashion and with prestigious websites such as Facebook and 2nd life gaining the trust of it's users to use their credit cards, there is a new form of legal tender slowly coming about. This video will explain exactly what I mean:
Overall, what I found from this is that the reason for all this advertising and detail demanding is yet again, the hunger for information, and it is becoming more and more available through the enabling of customer loyalty online. If this change has only begun, and companies like Boku and Zong are only facilitating people with an easier form of payment now, and the use of swipe cards with virtual money becoming used in the real world, then there is a long way to go yet. This shows us that a new era of e-Retail, has truly just begun.
Robert Dineen
