Social media gaming giant Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) is teaming up with American Express Company (NYSE:AXP) to create a new debit card that will allow users to redeem virtual credits.
According to Jeff Karp, marketing and revenue officer for Zynga, this will be the first rewards program for a prepaid debit card. He also says it should bring a little more value to Zynga players and add give American Express more customers.
Later on this week, card users who spend more than $25 will receive free “FarmCash”, play currency gamers use to purchase virtual goods in the game FarmVille. Zynga already plans to unroll similar offers for other popular games including CastleVille and CityVille.
Neither company has plans to disclose the details about their financial plans.
David Schulman, group president of entertprise growth at American Express, stated, “This enables us for the first time, in a fully integrated fashion, to link everyday spend that you would do online or offline to in-game virtual currency rewards and special offers.” He continues on to say that they one day hope to expand and offer real-life discounts for users.
Zynga has been performing poorly on the stock market as the company’s stocks have been declining over the last few days. This move is most likely an attempt to boost the company. After April 1st, the company lost almost half of their stocks because investors assumed that Zynga couldn’t sustain their growth in revenues.
The last few months have been pretty rough on Zynga as a company but it looks like they’re ready to move forward with bigger plans. Their new prepaid debit card sounds like it will be a hit with tweens who like to spend money while earning virtual cash and their parents who want to encourage financial responsibility. The only downside to this prepaid card is that I can’t see most people over 21 using this card like a regular bank card.
