The Social Gold platform is used by developers of applications on social networks like Facebook and MySpace as well as online games to create currency systems and monitise their offerings.

Jambool - founded by Amazon veterans Vikas Gupta and Reza Hussein - initially developed its own games on social networks before switching its focus in October.

It now offers other developers a platform for virtual currency, payments - including via credit cards, Paypal, Google, Amazon and mobile phones - and analytics.

Commenting on the investment in his blog, Gupta says: "The timing couldn't be better, as the virtual goods space has exploded to become the de-facto monetization strategy for social games and applications. So, more developers are going to need to create currencies and accept payments seamlessly within their applications. Social Gold is poised to provide the solutions that these companies need to take advantage of this market opportunity."

Earlier this year Facebook began testing its own much-anticipated virtual currency payments system with third party applications.