Hot off the press, here is the presentation I gave at the Virtual Goods Summit today.
Have you signed up for Social Gold in-game payments yet? Now you can let your users pay within your flash game — keeping them engaged!
John is playing Barn Buddy on Facebook, but doesn’t have enough currency to buy the guard dog he so desperately wants. To purchase more virtual coins he has to leave the Flash application for an HTML form or Javascript pop-up, and, while away from the game, gets distracted and doesn’t return.
Jenny is playing Uno when she runs out of coins to buy kudos, gifts and gags for her online friends. In order to refresh her account she also has to refresh the game, losing her hand.
So far, these have been unavoidable consequences of doing real business in the middle of Flash-based games; it’s not uncommon to see up to 15 percent abandonment with each additional page in the transaction flow. This translates into less engagement and fewer payments.
Social Gold is changing that with the launch of the first ever secure in-flash payments solution.
For the first time, users of Flash-based games can now update their accounts without leaving the game for a separate payments page; finishing a purchase drops them exactly where they left off, with no reloading necessary.
Even more pertinent is the fact that in the exploding landscape of social-gaming development, Social Gold for Flash allows players to keep their financial information with a single, trustworthy source, rather than handing it over repeatedly, every time they want to try a new platform. Our patent-pending technology ensures that sensitive data is kept securely away from other in-flash code, so that neither the game itself nor any third-party code or servers has access to the keystrokes or data in any form fields. Even the developers’ credentials are protected against malicious use.
Here’s how it works: After setting up a virtual currency account at Jambool, you can download and link-in a small library (SWC) into your application. To register a transaction, you tell the library to open a “buy currency” interface within the game’s Flash application. Social Gold for Flash then securely collects and verifies the user’s credit card credentials and authorizes the transaction, keeping every detail except for the ultimate approval out of your hands, and you can then update the player’s in-game balance. The entire time in this flow, the user stays engaged within your flash game.
“We obsess over user engagement, and traditional monetization solutions kill engagement,“ said Markus Weichselbaum, CEO of TheBroth and creator of Barn Buddy, which boasts 7 million monthly active users. “Social Gold for Flash works great for us, keeping our users engaged while helping to drive increased revenue.”
Social Gold was the first product to provide in-game payment experience for non-flash applications, and with this release we’ve made it possible for users to do secure in-game transactions in flash games too.
Increase your conversion by providing your users with a truly seamless payments experience! The integration is easy; sign up here.
Social Gold will be at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco this week. Those who attended last year — or those who attended last June’s Social Gaming Summit by the same organizers — know that this is one of the more exciting conferences catering to the virtual goods community.
If you haven’t registered yet, you should — and you can use the “SOCIALGOLD” discount code to get 15% off registration.
Come hear us talk about “How to launch your virtual currency” on the first day of the conference, also known as the Virtual Goods Summit University. Drop by and say hello — and we may even have a surprise gift for you. 
