In the past, we've

Two and a half years ago, Zopa

We've written about social commerce before, with such sites as

It's not every day that a new credit card is launched, and it appears that the new RevolutionCard is not an everyday credit card, either. Breaking away from the long-standing MasterCard and Visa mold, the RevolutionCard aims to establish a more flexible, secure and internet-enabled model of credit card.

First on the list of paradigm-busting features is that the RevolutionCard does not print users' names or account numbers on their cards; rather, use of the card is based entirely on encryption and a 4-digit PIN. There is no annual fee, and the interest rate charged on unpaid balances depends on the user's credit profile. Consumers can store money on the card, loaded from their bank accounts. Merchants accepting the card, meanwhile, pay a fee of just 0.5 percent of the total sale, rather than the industry average of 1.9 percent.

The RevolutionCard was launched in late September by Revolution Money, a new iteration of the GratisCard division of Revolution LLC, which was founded in 2005 by AOL cofounder Steve Case. (Revolution Money is backed by Citi, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.) Along with its new card, Revolution Money also just launched an invitation-only beta version of Revolution MoneyExchange, a free, online