Partnership between La Redoute and iFeelGoods
- The Franco-American start-up iFeelGoods signed a partnership with La Redoute to position itself on the French market. iFeelGoods offers virtual gifts to Internet users buying real products on a merchant website instead of reduction coupons; for instance.
- La Redoute will offer Facebook credits to its customers; these credits can then be used with nearly 200 Facebook games and applications (FarmVille, CityVille or PetSociety).
- This initiative shows that Facebook credits are growing popular and are starting to become a currency in its own right, which can be exchanged by third parties. This evolution is all the more significant since the social network announced that from the 1st of July 2011, all Facebook games will require the use of Facebook credits. Today, Facebook credits are used by 350 applications and 150 developers and have managed to attract more than 70% of the transactions on Facebook.
- Virtual goods only appear to be a first step in the announced success of this new means of payment. Facebook is now developing partnerships with a large number of online merchants seeking new business opportunities on the social network. The American brand Target offers coupons for reloading Facebook credits to young customers who do not have a credit card.
See September 2010 Watch
- A few months ago, Facebook started to work on making payment easier on its platform. These efforts show that it intends to have a share in the e-commerce market – a partnership was signed with PayPal to validate "PayPal for Digital Goods" as yet another means of payment to buy and sell virtual goods on Facebook.