Take a look at the Inside Facebook blog and the ads from its sponsors - including Zong, SuperRewards, Allpass, PaymentPin and OfferPal.

Also, notice the survey results discussed in this article - none of the major consumer credit card companies or issuers made the top 10!

Have you signed up to use virtual currency or pay for digital goods using your mobile phone?

New on PaymentsViews.com: Purchasing Facebook Credits with Zong Mobile Payments by Glenbrook's Erin McCune.

In a TechCrunch post this morning titled "1-800-FLOWERS.COM Sets Up Shop Inside Facebook", Robin Wauters writes about the online retailer's new eCommerce store launched on its Facebook page inside Facebook. According to Wauters, "Registered users can now order all kinds of floral products from the popular florist and gift shop without ever leaving the social network."

In a post titled "It’s Heeerrre: ‘Pay With Facebook’ Is In The Wild", MG Siegler writes for TechCrunch that Facebook appears to be updating its Payments Terms to support the purchase of Facebook Credits - and has enabled a few specific applications that support the use of Facebook Credits once purchased.

eBIZ.mobility has announced a new Facebook payment plugin for its OneTouch Online Purchasing payment processing system. According to the company, "the new payment plugin allows application developers to monetize their Facebook traffic in 26 countries by adding an alternative payment option into their offerings." OneTouch says it "provides developers with a 77% revenue share and settles monthly." READ MORE

New research by Gartner finds that while social banking won't change the consumer banking model immediately, retail banks that understand social media, financial social networks and microfinance have a better chance of adapting their services. Those banks that don't "face the prospect of being sidelined in the emergence of the social-banking services model." READ MORE

Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness and Erin McCune are teaching a workshop on Web 2.0 and Financial Services this coming Thursday, March 19th.

In preparation, we'd like to gauge the level of social media and Web 2.0 participation in the Glenbrook community. There are only two questions and it won't take more than 2 minutes of your time (if that). Click here to take Glenbrook's Web 2.0 Survey

We'll share the results over on PaymentsViews.com later this week. Thank you!

Join us for the Web 2.0 & Financial Services Workshop we're holding on March 19th in Santa Clara, California.

The demographic reach of Web 2.0 may surprise you – it's not just kids! Consumer buying decisions and the perception of major brands are being driven by social media's influence.

After a number of tentative forays, financial institutions are starting to use the tools and techniques of Web 2.0 more confidently. But is it too late? A number of personal finance management success stories (Mint, Wesabe, Quicken Online and a host of popular bloggers) have already gained traction - has their early success been at the expense of financial institutions?

You've got questions and in this workshop we'll provide some answers. Join us as we explore the world of Web 2.0 technologies and their impact on financial services in this one day workshop (morning plus optional afternoon sessions) on March 19th in Santa Clara. Registration is now open.

Zuora has announced Z-Commerce for Facebook - calling it "the missing link to making the Facebook Economy a reality. Until today, the vast majority of Facebook applications were limited to an advertising-based revenue model. Now, Zuora’s vision of the Business Cloud – the commerce engine for cloud-based services – is available to all Facebook developers who want to charge for their applications using recurring pricing, usage-based fees, one-time charges, or the subscription pricing model that best fits their service."

[Editor's note: For a perspective on this space from Glenbrook's Russ Jones, see A Subscription-based App Store? on PaymentsViews.com.] READ MORE

Visa has unveiled the Visa Business Network, calling it "the first-ever application dedicated to connecting small businesses on Facebook. The Visa Business Network has been created with small businesses, for small businesses, and is a unique environment built on Facebook Platform for the small business arena." READ MORE

TechCrunch's Mark Hendrickson writes about Noca, a Redwood City, CA-based startup that "is attempting to virtually eliminate transaction fees by bypassing the credit card companies altogether with its own online payment service." Noca's mission statement says it is "building a new online payment system to provide significantly reduced transaction processing rates for online shopping enabling efficient processing of micro-transactions for digital goods."

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson writes: At Glenbrook, we often conclude one of our Payments Boot Camps with an informal poll of participants on their favored cash replacement form factor (mobile phone, fingerprint, etc.) At a private payments workshop in San Francisco last week, we were surprised by the strength of that group's response in favor of fingerprint. We decided to test it out (still pretty informally!) with a quick Facebook poll.

PayPal Labs, a new showcase site for some of PayPal's new experimental products, has launched at www.x.com. The first two products featured are PayPal's Facebook application to request money and a new fundraising tool for non-profits launched on MySpace.

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman filed the following report tonight from today's Finovate 1.0 Conference in New York City.

In an article titled 'For-Credit Course", Rob Walker writes for this Sunday's New York Times Magazine about Chase Card Services "+1" credit card - offered primarily by way of a sponsored group setup on Facebook called Chase +1. Chase limits access to the group so that only Facebook members who are part of college networks can join. Chase also has a Chase Credit Education group on Facebook that is open membership.

In a post titled "Following your money in Facebook", Colin Smillie blogs on his Inside Facebook blog about the personal financial management applications on Facebook - including BillMonk and Lending Club. He notes that "many developers have been clamoring for Facebook to launch a payment system fully integrated with the Platform soon."

The Google Checkout API Blog has a video interview with Renaud Visage, CTO of Eventbrite, about how he's monetizing a Facebook online events registration application using Google Checkout.

Dave Birch reflects on a Facebook poll that we ran recently - about online payment preferences among 18-24 year olds - and concludes: "One crucial difference that might be apparent in the Facebook case is that these consumers don't distinguish between banks, non-banks and third-party offerings. They go by convenience, utility and brand. And brand is so, so important."

Carolyn Y. Johnson writes for the Boston Globe about social networking sites and how they're beginning to offer financial advice. Johnson notes that "the tools that people use to connect with their peers and share information on websites like Facebook, Del.icio.us, or Wikipedia can help people save money or make smarter purchases." She quotes Wesabe's Jason Knight: "Social finance is a way for consumers to find out if there's real value where they're spending money. . . . It's absolutely critical in rebalancing the power between consumers and marketers."

PayPal is challenging its developer community in a PayPal Developer Challenge content to develop Facebook widgets that use PayPal. The grand prize available in the Challenge is $10,000.

Jim Bruene posts on his NetBanker blog about PayPal's launch of its own application on the Facebook platform.

By the way, I've been enjoying Facebook since signing up a couple of months ago. If you know me (Scott Loftesness), have attended one of our Glenbrook Payments Boot Camps, etc. and want to send me a Facebook friend request, I'd be happy to reciprocate.

We ran a Facebook poll last night asking those between 18 and 24 years of age "When you buy something online, how do you prefer to pay?" Here are the results - based upon a sample of over 400 responses - hardly scientific but interesting nonetheless:

No surprise, the debit card is most favored among this age group - but PayPal's showing is also especially strong. New entrant Google Checkout barely moves the needle in this particular survey and almost no one likes to pay by providing their checking account details (also known as eCheck).

Jane Kim writes for the Wall St. Journal about social networking sites focused on personal finance - including Wesabe and BillMonk.

Speaking of BillMonk, they just launched the BillMonk application on the FaceBook Platform. They say "Let BillMonk help you keep track of money that you've borrowed or loaned, and eliminate the awkwardness of mixing money and friends. Use it to keep track of IOUs, and shared bills like beer, food, or utilities. Let us deal with the pain of money math and reminders, so you can concentrate on the beer and not who paid for it."

Want to learn more about the FaceBook Platform, read this excellent post by Marc Andreessen.

Last week, Facebook launched a new polling capability - allowing simple polls to be setup and conducted across its membership base. Mike Arrington covered the launch of Facebook Polls on his TechCrunch blog, calling it a "marketing research paradise." Last night, we gave Facebook Polls a trial run - setting up a poll that asked a sample of 200 18-25 year olds on Facebook whether they had ever used PayPal Mobile to send money to friends. This results aren't very scientific - but still interesting and fun. You can view the results of the poll here. This poll cost $25 to run - $5 to set it up and $0.10 per response for 200 responses.

Jim Bruene blogs about his upcoming Online Banking Report issue on the topic of Social Personal Finance. Jim says it will include "a detailed look at Wesabe and Lending Club, which is catering entirely to Facebook users, and what banks should do to compete and/or partner with this new type of financial provider."

Lending Club, a Sunnyvale, California-based startup, has launched a new person-to-person lending service on the social networking service FaceBook. From the company's web site: "Lending Club is an online lending community where people can borrow and lend money, bypass the banks, and get better rates. By working together, members can borrow money more easily and at a better rate than they would get from a bank, or invest in a pool of loans at higher rates than those served by savings accounts or CDs." Lending Club is using the recently introduced Facebook Platform for integration into Facebook. Read more on the Lending Club blog.

The Wall St. Journal reports this morning that Chase has entered into a one-year marketing agreement to be the exclusive credit card sponsor on Facebook.