Friendster bought by online gaming payment company

Just as the wounds surrounding digital payment company Offerpal and social gaming heavy Zynga are just starting to heal, MOL Global Ptr. Ltd. an online digital payment company that facilitates payments between players and over 70 online gaming companies announced an agreement to purchase Friendster.

With over 100 million users, Friendster isn't a small network, but with the rise of Facebook's dominance amongst social networks, the company has found it difficult to grow. MOL, based in Malaysia, plans to merge its current resources with Friendster to "create Asia's largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network, pairing MOL's offline retail channel partners and payment platform with Friendster's large online footprint, social network and user community in Asia."

Since 75% of Friendster's traffic comes from the countries that MOL serves (including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and India), the decision to buy Friendster seems like good business sense and a way to expand the company's list of game, music, video and other virtual offerings. Considering that MOL is already integrated with over 200 online games and company's motto is "it's money online," it will be interesting to see if the new Friendster will become the go to gaming site for Southeast Asia and beyond.

Financial terms of the agreement were not unveiled in a press release issued by MOL Global.