Today whilst tucking into my lunch I was browsing the daily e-newsletter from the lovely guys at Mashable and came across this article: Facebook’s PayPal Rival? Gift Marketplace On the Way. It looks at Facebook’s plans to create a virtual currency and turn it into a payment platform that would spread across the web and realize the original goal of PayPal: to become the web’s universal currency.

Ben Parr from the Mashable blog describes how the first piece of the FacePal puzzle has already launched: Facebook Credits, the virtual Facebook currency that has been in testing since April or so. Now, Facebook is opening up its virtual gifts platform to 3rd party developers and will include physical gifts in a limited test with a limited number of users. These gifts will be clearly marked with the logo of the developer. The initial test, according to a statement from Facebook, will include American Greetings Interactive, GreetBeatz, Somecards, and Real Gifts.

So could this be the next step towards making Facebook credits a viable universal web currency? We will soon be able to buy real-life items on Facebook, and it could not be long before we’ll be paying for our weekly shop at Tesco, or buying a new book on Amazon.com using Facebook credits...

Whilst these plans are still in their infancy they could open many new opportunities for charities fundraising online – We’ll definitely be keeping our eyes on this one...