The Alphaville Herald

MMO Project Entropia to Get Banking License

by Alphaville Herald on 23/03/09 at 7:57 am

Real life banking license for spacebux?

by Idoru Wellman, staff writer

Project Entropia has long been known as a hype machine rivaled only by Second Life, and it has also been known as a de facto online virtual casino. Now, according to Ars Technica, it is applying for a banking license – as in a legitimate banking license:

MindArk PE AB, the company behind sci-fi MMO Entropia Universe will apparently be able to let players conduct real-world banking from within its online game. Of course, Entropia Universeactually features a cash-based economy already, where players canexchange real money for game currency at an exchange rate of 10:1 (tenin-game dollars to one U.S. dollar) and then buy in-game items with themoney; the game itself has proven to be incredibly successful, havinggenerated over $420 million last year.

Now, though,MindArk's going to be just like a bank in the real world: it will bebacked by Sweden's $60,000 deposit insurance, offer interest-bearingaccounts for its clients, feature direct deposit options, let playerspay bills online, and apparently will offer loans to customers.

The interest, we suppose, is that other virtual world makers (or users) might do the same if this works out.

 h/t to Raph's blog