American Express targets Farmville community

American Express is willing to farm for money, The Huffington Post reports.

On Tuesday, the financial services company announced the launch of a new FarmVille-branded prepaid card as part of its Zynga Serve Rewards programme. Serve is American Express' digital payments platform.

FarmVille users interested in the card, which can earn them up to 360 Farm Cash, first have to visit a Serve farm within the virtual game and then plant a Serve Money Tree on their farms, Los Angeles Times writes.

Once they've done that, the process gets a little more normal as users must register for the card and wait for it to arrive.

The card rewards FarmVille users when they sign up, when they activate the card, when they add money to the account, for their first five purchases of more than $25, and when they harvest the tree - because, you know, it's FarmVille.

US News writes that American Express hopes its partnership with FarmVille-maker Zynga will help the company target a wider demographic. Farmville is one of Zynga's older games, but still one of its most popular, boasting more than 4.5 million unique users a day.

"It opens up tremendous opportunities to address segments of the market that we weren't able to address with traditional credit or charge products, including the youth or under-served markets," Dan Schulman, American Express' president of enterprise growth, said.