Asian Users Will Be Able to Buy Facebook Credits with MOLPoints

Anyone dealing with the financial system knows how convoluted it can be. Sometimes it looks like even the bankers don’t know what’s going on, the global economic crisis is just one example. But it seems these kinds of issues are inevitable when dealing with money, even virtual ones. Facebook has just announced that it has entered an agreement with MOL, the company that bought Friendster recently, which will allow the giant social network to sell Facebook Credits in Asia.

Nothing outlandish about that, Facebook is doubling down on efforts to push its virtual currency as the standard way to pay for virtual items on the site. There’s good reason for that, the market could prove very lucrative and it’s growing at a fast pace. Zynga, the social gaming powerhouse which relies on virtual currency for much of its revenue, is one of the hottest companies of the moment.

Facebook users will now be able to buy Credits from brick-and-mortar stores which are part of the MOL network. The Asian company has 500,000 of such points in several countries in the region so Facebook is getting a broad distribution network.

But MOL has its own virtual currency, MOLPoints, which are very popular in the region. And users will now be able to buy Facebook Credits with MOLPoints, effectively converting one currency for the other. Converting cash into virtual currency is bad enough for losing perspective on how much you’re paying for stuff, this takes it one step further.

Most people have trouble changing one real-world currency into another; the confusion is probably going to be even worse for virtual currencies. But that seems to be the future and what we’re seeing now are just the first steps. For its part, Facebook is understandably excited by the new opportunity.

"Working with MOL means we can offer the benefits of Facebook Credits to millions of people in Asia using a payment system that is already widely used and trusted," Vaughan Smith, director of business and corporate development at Facebook, said. "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."