… You take away his credit card. (Har har har.)

But no, really: the World of Warcraft Visa rewards you for purchases by crediting your WoW account with gametime. (Link via Boing Boing via the in-between via makezine via Joi Ito.) Make‘s take on this is particularly interesting, particularly seeing as how they saw this coming awhile ago.

Arguably, this is a blending of economies right before our eyes, but I’d be really interested to see real-world credit cards that reward you with gold pieces in-game. Now that I think about that, though, such a move would probably make people upset about game balance issues—so how about an in-game credit card that rewards players with points redeemable for real-world purchases? As we see games increasingly blur the boundaries between work and play, it would be fascinating to see game world actually designed to take advantage of these shifts.