Anyone who calls fb credits a "tax" knows nothing about payments. A ubiquitous payment system where users are already authenticated could easily double conversion rates once deployed at scale.
None of those are ubiquitous. I'm describing the network effect, making this quite relevant. Also, I'm pretty sure some of those do charge 30% regardless.
Apple takes 30%. Needing to enter only a password to pay for something (instead of a credit card) probably makes that worth it. Facebook doesn't even require the password.
Pretty sure they don't charge 30% - I know the guys behind half the list.
Facebook are starting from scratch with credits, these companies and others have millions of existing users who have existing money in their accounts. Facebook on the other hand have hundreds of millions of facebook users, not people topping up their credits to buy stuff in games. Most of their users don't even play games.
That doesn't make Facebook ubiquitous and it will leave people wondering why they can't use the balance of their other account in the games they play like previously, and it will leave developers eating a fee that is up to 22% higher than it was through 3rd parties.
Although some will 'win' and make assloads of money overall it's not a 'win' anymore than it would be if you could only accept Visa.
Social Gold is very ubiquitous -- I would even argue more than Facebook Credits. Developers use Social Gold even outside of the Facebook platform -- where FB credits have zero value.
Social Gold enables single click across games -- and a huge number of users already have stored credit cards. And of course it comes with a much better conversion and much lower fee for the developer.
Facebook is ubiquitous, but even on their own platform, Social Gold is far more widely used than FB credits. FB can force credits to be ubiquitous on their own platform, but the world is a much bigger place.
Yes, it is 1.4 times the deal people had, if and only if the conversion rate goes up that much. Whether the terms will change or not in the future is also something that a businessperson would consider.
P.S. Yeah, I know the mathematics above isn't exact if there is already a fee for transactions, etc., etc.
Actually the numbers could be much, much better than 2X.
But your last point about the risk of a changing playfor
is very valid. In the case of payments, I'd bet for a conservative initial system that gets more flexible over time. The nature of anti-fraud almost mandates that approach.
>Actually the numbers could be much, much better than 2X.
Or the numbers could be exactly the same, either way, he's muscling in on 30% of their revenue for providing pre-existing functionality and expecting them to like it or lump it.
If it was a smaller cut, I imagine it would be a much easier pill to swallow, but 30% is just plain greed.
30% off of 2X is a great deal