From MAKE: Blog: comes a brilliant Idea:

Credit Cards that earn you virtual currency for spending real currency.

The only issue, as Della Bitta and I were talking, is that this would really only work if there was an already open economy (i.e. Second Life would work.. WOW would have issues)

But DAMN, if the credit card companies aren’t all over this, they are damn fools.

On another semi-related note is this Wired article that explores how convergence of technologies, and standards is bound to happen to virtual worlds. It makes alot of sense, and has big implications.