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Facebook to retire Credits on September 12

The social network's 4-year-old virtual currency will be laid to rest in 90 days.

Jennifer Van Grove Former Senior Writer / News
Jennifer Van Grove covered the social beat for CNET. She loves Boo the dog, CrossFit, and eating vegan. Her jokes are often in poor taste, but her articles are not.
Jennifer Van Grove
facebook credits local currency
Facebook

Facebook said Wednesday that it will no longer support Facebook Credits, a virtual currency specific to the social network, as of September 12, 2013. Developers, instead, will need to migrate their applications to local currency payments using the company's just-released API.

The complete payments switch, a year in the making, is meant to help developers better price their virtual goods for international markets, as well as simplify the purchase process for buyers.

"Local currency payments give developers much more control over their pricing and payments," software engineer Yongyan Liú wrote in a blog post. With the local currency payments API, developers can set prices for in-game items by market, price items dynamically, and speed up in-app transactions, he said.

Facebook Credits were introduced in 2009 and became the de facto payments system for games running on the social network. The model, however, proved overly complex for app makers who wanted pricing flexibility or already offered their own in-game currencies.