Thursday, June 28, 2012

Facebook Credits

Facebook Credits

The most effective way for developers to generate revenue in games and apps on Facebook

Facebook Credits is a payment system that offers a safe, easy and fast way to pay for digital and virtual goods in games and apps across Facebook.
  • Facebook users trust the Facebook brand and feel comfortable storing their payment information with Facebook and buying with their Facebook credentials.
  • Facebook Credits is avaialable internationally and supports 80+ payment methods in 50+ countries around the world and we continue to actively expand our footprint.
  • Finally Facebook credits provides a consistent way for users to buy on Facebook across mobile, desktop, games as well as non-game apps.
Developers already building on Facebook Platform can use the Graph API and Dialogs to integrate with our payments APIs and get the integration up and running quickly. This enables developers to focus on building their Apps and let us take care of all payments overhead!

Credits Payment Flows

Facebook offers two different payment flows for developers:
  1. Credits as a Payment Method
    This flow enables you to use Facebook Credits as a payment platform where you can charge users directly for items in your app (including your own in-app currency).
  2. Credits as a Currency
    This flow enables you to use Facebook Credits as an in-app currency (instead of having to manage your own in-app currency) where users will see and directly access their Credits balance.

Credits as a Payment Method

NOTE: To simplify the purchase experience for users, give you more flexibility, and make it easier for you to reach a global audience of Facebook users, we are updating our payments product to support pricing in local currency (ex: US dollar, British pound and Japanese yen) instead of Credits. We’ll release local currency support for in-app payments in Q3. Any apps or games that sell virtual items will be required to use local currency by the end of the year. For now, we will continue to support Credits as a payment method. Learn more about local currency pricing, and sign up for the latest information about the transition.
Facebook offers a payments platform that enables developers to leverage our payments services to charge their users on Apps on Facebook as well as their Mobile web Applications.
You can use Facebook Credits as a payments platform to buy in game virtual currency for your app or game. The user experience looks like below. A user places an order by clicking a button in the application.

In response, the app invokes the Pay dialog along with the order information which provide Facebook the item details. One of the following happens depending on the order and the user's credit balance and credentials on file.
  • If the user has sufficient credits balance then the user sees a confirmation dialog where they need to confirm the transaction before the order will get fulfilled.

  • If the user does not have sufficient balance then the user is asked to pick the payment method to pay for the required number of credits. There are several payment methods available to users depending on locale, so this screen will vary for users based on their locale.

When the user does not have payment credentials on file, the user may get redirected to a new page for entering credentials or may stay within the dialog, depending on the payment type. For example if the user chooses to enter their credit card information then they are redirected to a new page like below, but if they choose to do a mobile payment then it can be processed in the dialog itself.

Once the user confirms their willingness to pay and provides the credentials, Facebook calls the application backend to let the app owner's system settle the order. Once the app responds, Facebook completes the transaction appropriately and shows the result to the user. If the payment was done in the dialog, the user can click continue to close the payment dialog. If the payment was completed on the full page, the user can click continue to go to a destination url set by the app.

Credits as a Currency

NOTE: To simplify the purchase experience for users, give you more flexibility, and make it easier for you to reach a global audience of Facebook users, we are updating our payments product to support pricing in local currency (ex: US dollar, British pound and Japanese yen) instead of Credits. We’ll release local currency support for in-app payments in Q3. Any apps or games that sell virtual items will be required to use local currency by the end of the year. By that time, all developers who use Credits as a currency will need to replace Credits with their own virtual currency. Learn more.
Some applications might benefit from a flow where credits is used as an in-game currency and help users bulk up on credits for later use in your apps. In this case your application can invoke appropriate payment dialog to enable users to buy credits which is a stored currency on Facebook that they users can use to pay for good across our various apps and games on Facebook.

Credits on Mobile

The pay dialog can also be rendered in a mobile environment in the same way as it can for Apps on Facebook on desktop. Users have the option to pay with their existing payment credentials, their mobile phone, or our 80+ payment methods. For more information on mobile platform, please see our mobile documentation.

Here is what the payment flow looks like in a mobile browser:


Accepting payments are different on iOS since Facebook Credits are not supported within iOS native apps.
  • On the mobile web (including mobile web apps linked from Android), you must use Facebook Credits.
  • On iOS, you must build a native app and use iTunes payments.
On Mobile Web, the only additional step to get up and running with payments is to select the 'Enable payments on the mobile web' checkbox, as seen below.

On iOS, you can quickly build a native app from your web app by using a tool like PhoneGap.

Earning Credits via Offers

Using the Facebook Credits API, you can directly link users to Facebook’s Offers flow, in partnership with TrialPay:
  1. Direct Access to Offers: Adding this functionality to your app will give users the chance to earn Facebook Credits by completing offers that matter to them, boosting both engagement and revenue.
  2. DealSpot: DealSpot allows users to access exclusive deals via an in-app icon. From buying flowers for Valentine’s Day to watching trailers for the latest movies, users will be matched to an intelligent rotation of deals, creating an additional revenue stream for credits developers.
Read here for more information.

Get Started

For integration details and best practices, please refer to the following resources:
Facebook Credits Getting started Tutorial
NOTE: Per the Facebook Credits Terms, all games on the Facebook Platform (including mobile web apps) must exclusively process payments through Facebook Credits. Games that have not integrated Facebook Credits will be subject to enforcement.

No comments:

Post a Comment