Friendster Launches Global Partnership With MOL AccessPortal Berhad (MOL) to Power Micropayments and the Friendster Wallet
Leading Payment Platform Provider to Enable Pre-paid Payments for Gifts, Goods and Games to Friendster's 115 Million Users
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia/PRNewswire/ -- Friendster, Inc., a
top global web site based on traffic, today announced a global
partnership with MOL AccessPortal Berhad (MOL), a leading payments
provider leveraging a network of over 500,000 physical and virtual
payment channels worldwide, to power the Friendster Wallet and a
payments platform enabling micro-spending for over 115 million users on
Friendster. The Friendster Wallet will support a variety of payment
methods including pre-paid cards, mobile payments, online payments and
credit card payments. The partnership will be celebrated by an official
signing ceremony event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on October 15th, at
the Berjaya Times Square Hotel & Convention Centre. Both the
payments platform and wallet will initially launch in Malaysia, and
will be rolled out within weeks throughout Southeast Asia and globally.
Friendster's new payments platform and wallet are fundamental
enablers for several new, additional revenue streams that result from
establishing a transactional, financial relationship with its users.
Shortly, Friendster will introduce virtual gifts, goods and games
turning Friendster into an increasingly fun, online entertainment
destination for users and their friends. These new entertainment
offerings will be free to use and will also include optional premium
elements that will generate significant new revenue streams - all of
which are proven business and revenue models in Asia where Friendster
is a leading web site. These new transaction-based revenue streams are
in addition to Friendster's current advertising and sponsorship revenue
models that are an integral part of the business going forward and the
user experience.
Since most youth consumers in Asia do not possess credit cards, the
availability of alternate payment methods is essential for Friendster's
core user base to spend and transact within the community. The
Friendster Wallet will offer critical alternative payment methods such
as prepaid "top-up" cards, which can be purchased at readily-accessible
convenience stores such as 7-Eleven. Users can buy a physical pre-paid
card at thousands of offline locations throughout Asia with cash, and
then enter the unique code from the card into the Friendster Wallet to
receive the money as credit into his or her account. Friendster will
store account balances and allow users to make purchases on
Friendster.com for gifts, games, goods and services.
As part of the partnership, MOL will provide a variety of payment
capabilities for Friendster users, including the virtual wallet,
transaction management, pre-paid physical cards, support for multiple
payment methods, and fraud management. Some of the payment methods MOL
supports are operated by MOL directly, and some are provided via
integration with third-party providers, like PayPal. The MOL platform
is used today on a variety of large scale web sites and supports
payments for transactions surrounding goods, services, gifts, online
games, premium content, and e-commerce for applications and 3rd party
integrations.
The Friendster Wallet will enable stored credit for each Friendster
user in a currency called "Friendster Coins." It can be spent
throughout Friendster's site for goods and services. The wallet will
also include a non-monetary, marketing currency called "Friendster
Chips" -- funding incentive-based promotions, educating users on how
the Friendster Wallet works (and how to give gifts to their friends),
as a marketing tool to use in conjunction with special offers, and as a
loyalty program to encourage continued prepayment and spending on
Friendster.
"We're excited to work with MOL, as they're a payments platform
leader throughout our major markets in Asia," said Richard Kimber,
chief executive officer at Friendster. "Just like PayPal eliminated
'payment friction' in the globally successful eBay marketplace for
buyers and sellers, MOL will help Friendster deliver many new and
important revenue streams by seamlessly powering micro-transactions for
a wealth of premium entertainment and content features."
"Through this strategic partnership, we're enabling many users to
pay for goods and services online, for the first time, and in doing so,
creating a valuable transactional ecosystem on Friendster," said Ganesh
Kumar Bangah, president and chief executive officer at MOL. "We're
excited to extend our payments platform exponentially via this
relationship, as both companies will benefit from the continuous
loading and spending within the Friendster Wallet."
For launch, the Friendster Wallet will support a variety of payment
options including pre-paid payment cards; available throughout
Southeast Asia, purchased at convenience stores such as 7- Eleven in
Malaysia and Philippines, mobile phone shops such as Oke Shop in
Indonesia, kiosks such as AXS in Singapore and cybercafe networks in
Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. The
wallet will also support mobile payments from Singtel GX Credits and
Indosat iPay. Online banking payments from Maybank, CIMB Bank, RHB
Bank, Citibank Singapore, UOB and DBS will also be accepted as well as
credit card payments from American Express, Visa and Mastercard.
Moving forward, the Friendster Wallet will be extended to third
parties like partners, game publishers, application developers and
others. These payment APIs will allow third parties to leverage
Friendster Coins as a payment method or incorporate Friendster Coins in
their games, applications, products and web sites.
The launch event in Kuala Lumpur will include a press conference,
signing ceremony, and presentations by both Richard Kimber and Ganesh
Kumar Bangah, CEOs of Friendster and MOL, respectively.
About Friendster
With more than 115 million members worldwide, Friendster is a
leading global online social network. Friendster is focused on helping
people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things
that are important to them. Friendster is one of the best sites that
allow people to meaningfully participate with others in exciting and
fun ways. Friendster prides itself in delivering an easy-to-use,
friendly and interactive environment where users can easily connect
with anyone around the world via www.friendster.com or m.friendster.com
from any Internet-ready mobile device. Friendster has a growing
portfolio of patents granted to the company on social networking, with
more expected over the next several months. Headquartered in Mountain
View, California, Friendster is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield
& Byers, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, IDG Ventures and
individual investors. For more information, visit: www.friendster.com
About MOL
MOL is a MSC Malaysia Status Company that operates and develops
payment systems. MOL handles over 60,000,000 payment transactions a
year with an annual payment volume of over USD200million. It leverages
on a network of over 500,000 physical and virtual payment channels
across more than 75 countries and linked to 65 banks in 15 countries
worldwide to operate its key payment products, namely MOLePoints: an
online micropayment system for content and services, MOLeTopUp: an
electronic prepaid distribution infrastructure, MOL Freedom: a
multi-application prepaid payment card, Gameshive: an online game
payment aggregator, MOL Wings: a payment aggregator for wired and
wireless internet service providers, MOL Zone: a multi-application
mobile payment service, and MOL Safepay: an escrow-based payment system
for micro-merchants.
MOL was recognized as one of Asia Pacific's fastest growing
technology companies in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific
Awards in 2005 and 2006 and has won a Merit Award for the Best of
E-Commerce Applications in the MSC Asia Pacific ICT Awards.
Source: Friendster, Inc.
CONTACT: Jeff Roberto of Friendster, +1-650-237-1411,
press@friendster.com; or Halida Abu Bakar of MOL AccessPortal Berhad,
+603.2082 1251
Web Site:
http://www.friendster.com/Read more