Monday, September 10, 2007

Credit in the Metaverse


Now comes a credit card for Second Life. A credit card for the Metaverse, it is called the MetaCard and comes from First Meta. There are even different versions: Basic, Gold and Corporate. While the MetaCard appears to be the first of its kind, its presence is somewhat limited. First, only participating merchants will accept the card as payment. Second, there are limits on the amount that can be charged to the card: L$5,000 for Basic, L$10,000 for Gold and L$25,000 for Corporate per month. That amounts to less than US$20, US$40 and US$100, respectively. The interest for balances is 0.13%, compounding daily. While there is a 2.5% transaction fee charged to merchants for each transactions, merchants get the benefit of a MetaSavings account that yields interest of 0.09%, compounding daily.