With year opening with predictions that social gaming would grow into a billion dollar industry this 2011,  big players are now joining the crowd and making their own move to get ahead, or at least keep up with the fast pace. The latest to jump into the colossal potential of games and online payments, which automatically is tied up to one another in the tech community, is VISA as it shells out $190 million to acquire PlaySpan. Thriving in an already saturated marketplace, VISA wants to explore other horizon.

This is not the first time that VISA will dive to online payment, gaming and mobile craze. July of 2010, the largest credit and debit card processing network purchased CyberSource- a payment processing enterprise. This acquisition is expected to expand the company’s presence in mobile payments and e-commerce as PlaySpan complements the capabilities of CyberSource. The deal is expected to close early 2^nd quarter of this year.

With all the developments, it seems that VISA is also going after virtual goods that convert to real and high revenues and virtual currencies. These two have been drawing some money and credits for game developers and social networking site such as Facebook, which recently announced its new virtual currency rules that almost scared neophytes in the business. Super Rewards, a well-known game in app monetization has already expanded its wings and brings virtual goods to Android and is eyeing 9-figure profits this year.

It’s quite interesting to observe that within this circle of events, social gaming, online payments, e-commerce, credit card industry, virtual goods and mobile industry just keep on attracting each other. In an article by John Theriault of The New England Business Bulletin, he analyzes how social gaming is shaping up other industries, including the above-mentioned. It is also quite exciting to note how people turn into their mobile phones, make payments instead of swiping their credit cards. This could be one reason why a biggie like VISA would like to intrude the online & mobile payment scheme.