Virtual Credit Cards in Second Life

If you are a Second Life (SL) Resident buying virtual things you may have another option. Most Residents currently obtain SL currency by using their Real Life (RL) credit cards to purchase Linden Dollars, the Second Life Currency but now there's another "plastic" option.

Singapore company First Meta recently launched the MetaCard that members can use in SL to make purchases in Linden Dollars. A standard MetaCard gets you a L$5,000 (read that as 50 thousand Linden dollars) monthly limit which is around $19 U.S. If you are a big spender you can also get a Gold MetaCard with a L$10,000 monthly limit. Both cards carry a L$300 monthly fee that is waived if you spend L$500 that month. The Gold card carries a standard daily percentage yield (DPY) of 0.09% and the standard card has a DPY of 0.06%. There is also a corporate card.

The September 24, 2007 edition of Business Week reported that only about 100 SL members are currently using the cards and there are approximately 140 SL merchants currently accepting them. According to Second Life insider:

It requires signing up with your RL name as well as your SL name, and for the corporate credit card a link to your RL credit card ..... Merchants will pay a fee for their credit card transactions too, just like RL credit cards.

We'll see if this concept takes off!