Two New Features for Facebook Credits

Today, we’re introducing two features for developers that use Facebook Credits as the primary virtual currency within their games: buy with friends and frictionless payments. These features enhance the user experience when credits are integrated as the in-game currency and premium virtual goods are priced in credits.

Buy with friends
Buy with friends gives people the option to share a discount with their friends after they make purchases in games.

After making a purchase, the user has the option to share a discount for the same item with their friends through the news feed. Their friends can respond by either going to the game to buy the item, or simply making a purchase inline without losing the context of what they were doing on Facebook.

Only friends who play the same game see the deal in their news feed. It’s up to the developer to decide which purchases can be shared, what level of discount to offer and how long the deal should run. Buy with friends has performed well in our tests -- more than half of people who were offered a deal in-game decided to share it with their friends, and the engagement and conversion rates on the resulting posts were also strong.

Simply configure a product and a deal using the Graph API, and then create a pay button:

 var obj = {
   method: "pay",
   dev_purchase_params: {product_id: [product id], deal_id: [deal id]}
 };
 FB.ui(obj, callback);

Frictionless payments
Frictionless payments enable people to make small purchases (currently 30 credits or less) with no friction -- and almost instantly. Instead of using the Facebook Credits user interface, these purchases happen directly in the game’s UI, making it easy for people to make purchases without interruption.

The frictionless API is a Graph API call:

POST https://graph.facebook.com/[app_id]/payments?access_token=
[access_token]&from=[user_id]&to=[app_id]&order_details=[order_details]

We’ve tested frictionless payments with a few beta partners and have seen positive results from a purchase experience that combines the look and feel of the game with the virtual currency of Platform. You can see examples of frictionless payments in Mahjongg Dimensions, Ravenwood Fair and Draw My Thing.

One point to note is that these two features are exclusive to Facebook Credits and therefore can only be used with virtual goods. You can apply to enable buy with friends and frictionless payments here. Developer documentation and sample code also is available here.

Prashant Fuloria, a product management director, is looking out for cool deals he hopes his friends share with him.