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Facebook previews local currency pricing for developers

With the official roll out scheduled later this year, Facebook developers should start taking a look at the new local currency rules now.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor
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Facebook has finally revealed more details about its new local currency pricing scheme as it moves farther away from its own Credits program.

See also: Facebook adds online portal, tools to marketing developers program

Announced amid the start of the 2013 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the purpose of the new payments infrastructure is basically to reduce the number of steps required along the transaction process.

To get an idea of how payments have worked for apps and games on Facebook until now, here's an explanation from Facebook software engineer Yongyan Liú in a blog post on Monday:

When Facebook Credits launched in 2011, developers needed to price virtual goods in $0.10 USD increments, which did not provide the pricing flexibility that developers wanted. For some game developers, credits also introduced a secondary currency on top of an in-game currency. With local currency payments, developers set prices based on a person’s preferred currency like Euros or Japanese Yen for a more seamless purchase.

With the very detailed documentation being unveiled for the first time today, Facebook is promising that the updates will roll out by the third quarter of this year.

At that point, developers will have a minimum of 90 days to implement the updated payments infrastructure to continue accepting payments.

Facebook has been making adjustments and working to simplify the payments process for its developers worldwide over the last few months.

Back in August, the world's largest social network introduced new subscription options in which developers could charge customers for updated content and/or premium experiences for a monthly fee. However, at that time, developers were still paid in U.S. dollars.

Image via The Facebook Developers Blog

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