Leave your virtual bucks in your space wallet because I — like Facebook — only deal in cold, hard cash.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":704945,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,social,","session":"B"}']In June, Facebook announced it would drop its Facebook Credits payment system in favor of using local currencies. Now the social network is setting a timeline for the migration, explaining why it made the decision in the first place, and inviting developers to prepare for the transition.
“We are migrating all game developers on Facebook.com [to local currency] in Q3 2013,” Facebook engineer Yongyan Liú wrote in an update. “After launch, developers will have a minimum of 90 days to implement the updated payments infrastructure to continue accepting payments.”
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Facebook’s outgoing payment system forces developers to increase prices based on $0.10 increments, which was about the value of a single FB Credit. This caused inconsistency in the value of social-game items from region to region due to fluctuations in the currency market.
“For example, a developer can now choose to price 1,500 ‘pirate rubies’ for $9.99 or 1,600 ‘pirate rubies’ for €7.99 for roughly the same value,” wrote Liú. “Using Facebook Credits, the developer would have had to price 1,500 ‘pirate rubies’ for $9.90 or €7.72. International pricing often changed on a daily basis.”
This enables developers to use the “.99” pricing format in every region around the world.
In addition to the new pricing flexibility, Facebook is working to speed up the checkout process.
“The updated Facebook Payments requires fewer callbacks to complete transactions and improves caching for a quicker payments flow for users,” wrote Liú.
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