All the way back in March, I wrote about how Facebook could rival PayPal by creating a virtual currency and making it usable for financial transactions, essentially making Facebook Credits the currency of the web.

Since then, we’ve seen several developments that have clearly pointed that FacebookFacebook is heading in this direction. They introduced Facebook Credits in April as a way to simply give friends spending money in the virtual gift shop. It’s now part of the Facebook gift marketplace, where you can use Facebook Credits to buy real gifts. PayPal’s concerned enough that last month they announced PayPal ID, a project to make your financial identity portable and secure across the web.