Mashable reports Zynga’s legion of social gamers have a new way to buy virtual goods —- pre-paid game cards that will be available for purchase at a combined more than 12,800 7-Eleven, Best Buy, Target and Gamestore stores.
The deal sees $10 and $25 cards for FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVille go on sale at the retailers, which can then be used online to buy in-game items. This is potentially a big new revenue stream for Zynga, since it means users that can’t currently make purchases because they don’t have a credit card can now just buy game cards with their hard-earned cash.
FarmVille also recently added a Facebook Credits payment option, but Facebook gets to keep 30% of that. Presumably, the retailers carrying the game cards are also getting some sort of cut, but it should still be a boon to Zynga, who now claims some 67 million daily active users across its games and is thought to be worth between $1.5-$3 billion.
Photo by FarmVille.