On the heels of announcing a payments partnership with Facebook, PlaySpan is making another announcement regarding the startup’s UltimatePay payments product. PlaySpan is launching UltimatePay Mobile, a virtual currency and micropayments monetization widget for smartphone platforms. The initial private beta launch will support Android phones and Nokia phones with WebRuntime installed.

UltimatePay is a ‘Monetization as a Service’ platform for apps, games, videos and digital goods. Based on the user’s location, the payments platform draws from over 85 different payment options. Because of its vast variety of payment options (which include PayPal, pre-paid cards, and a number of credit cards), UltimatePay is designed for a global audience.

UltimatePay Mobile gives smartphone developers a way to deliver a one-click payment experience to mobile gamers, and provide a comprehensive payments offering. The platform allows players to view their balance and transaction history, while allowing them to purchase items in-app without ever having to leave the game.

Of course, PlaySpan isn’t the first startup or company to bring in-app payments to Android phones; PayPal, Boku and Zong all offer in-app payments libraries to developers.

PlaySpan, which recently raised $18 million in new funding, already has a number of partnerships with a number of gaming and media companies, including Ubisoft, Sanrio and others. Perhaps the company can leverage some of these relationships to offer UltimatePay in publisher’s mobile games.

• This Used To Be My Playground
• Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell

While social commerce network Lockerz has been flying under the radar, the startup has quietly been able to raise an impressive amount of funding and accumulated nearly 18 million members after being open to the public for under two years. Lockerz has raised a total of $30 million, most recently nabbing $18 million from Kleiner Perkins newly launched sFund. Both John Doerr and Bing Gordon sit on Lockerz board of directors.

The Lockerz social commerce platform revolves around the idea that influencers within a social network can become brand and content advocates and affect the behavior of their friends. Lockerz is primarily targeted towards men and women ages 13 to 30, attempting to build a community of trendsetters and tastemakers who love to shop, play and connect on the Web.

Lockerz provides incentives like the ability to earn discounts on brands to encourage users to share content on the site. Members earn “Pointz” by watching videos, listening to music and inviting friends; pointz can then be used lower the prices of merchandise on the site. Users can also earn “Decalz” for sharing (similar to badges). New boutiques launch every Tuesday and feature brands such as 7 for All Mankind, Alex & Ani, Splendid, Rock & Republic, Matt Bernson, Quiksilver, Nintendo, and Xbox 360.

Founded by Kathy Savitt, a former Amazon and American Eagle Outfitters exec; Lockerz eventually wants to be the go-to commerce homepage for teens and young adults. One interesting part of the startup’s social growth is that it has no connection to Facebook. Savitt says that they are looking into connecting with Facebook, perhaps through a Facebook app, but that growth seems to be doing just fine with out the social network.

Lockerz started with 50 college kids that were friends and family of Savitt and her two daughters, and grew to 17.5 million users in less than one year. The site gets a little under 1 million unique visits per month (according to Google Analytics).

Social commerce is certainly hot these days, with social networks and commerce sites all throwing their hat in the ring with various products and acquisitions. But Lockerz has been able to gain a viral following from a subset of users, which is impressive. It should be interesting to see if the startup can continue its ascent.

• ZOTAC nVidia GeForce 9500GT 1 GB DDR2 VGA/DVI/HDMI PCI-Express Video Card ZT-95TEK2M-FSL
• Zalman ZM-F3 120mm Quiet Case Fan with Silicone Pins

About a month ago, we noted that LeWeb would be getting a bit more TechCrunch flavor this year. For the seventh iteration of the popular tech conference based in Paris, France, organizers Geraldine and Loic Le Meur decided to make their startup competition a bit more like a mini-TechCrunch Disrupt. That is, of the 16 startups launching, 3 will get time on the big stage to present in front of everyone and a winner will be chosen. And that won’t be the only TechCrunch influence felt.

As you can see on the just-released program for LeWeb ’10, TechCrunch names are all over the agenda. A group of us are slated to interview some of the big names in tech on stage during the two-day conference, which takes place on December 8 and 9 this year. And there seem to be a range of other interesting talks and panels as well.

A taste of the highlights:

• Leaders from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Mozilla, Foursquare, WordPress, EA, MySpace, UStream, Evernote, Microsoft, PayPal, Nokia, RIM, and more on stage.
• You can learn about how to get your company acquired (with people from Microsoft and Twitter).
• You can learn about how to create a top mobile game (with the CEO behind the company responsible for Angry Birds).
• You can hear about innovation in other parts of the world, such as Japan (with the CEO of DeNA).
• You can hear about where the media is heading (with people from CNN and Techmeme).
• A partner at DST will talk about investing hundreds of millions in Zynga and Facebook.
• You can learn about the building of a solar pane plane.
• Howard Lindzon, Gary Vaynerchuk, Leo Laporte, Dave McClure, Yossi Vardi, Dave Morin, and more will all be on hand for talks.

And, of course, the Disrupt-like startup competition finals with be hosted by our own Michael Arrington and August Capital partner David Hornik.

For a longer intro, be sure to check out Loic and Geraldine’s full rundown in the video below. And if you’re interested in attending, use this link for a 200 euro discount for TechCrunch readers. Hopefully we’ll see some of you in Paris in a few weeks.

• YC-Funded Nowmov: Sit Back, Relax, And Watch An Endless Stream Of…
• Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just…

In conjunction with the company’s developer conference, PayPal announced a slew of news and product releases this week, including a new micropayments product and an apps platform for businesses. But tucked away in a release was another piece of news from PayPal that could be huge. PayPal just released a new version of its popular iPhone app that allows users to find businesses near their immediate location that accept PayPal as a form of payment. Launching in San Francisco initially, the feature encourages merchants to attract nearby customers to their stores by posting deals and promotions to the app as an incentive for customers to visit their businesses.

Customers can search by category and location, and find and select stores, services, or special offers. Users can pick up the goods or services in person, but pay the merchant using their PayPal app. Users can also use tags from Bling Nation, a startup that has partnered with PayPal to use the startup’s mobile payment chips to deduct funds from a PayPal account.

One of the big selling points around using PayPal for merchants is the ability to offer deals as an incentive to drive buyers to a store or restaurant. Whether it be Groupon-like daily deals or just ordinary coupons, there’s no doubt that deals do help drive online to offline sales.

PayPal President Scott Thompson tells TechCrunch (see video below) that eventually this local feature will have “ubiquity,” meaning you’ll be able to access these merchant listings and pay with PayPal wherever you are in the world. Local is one of the key parts of PayPal’s future strategy, says Thompson. He’s confident that has the world becomes more connected, eventually all local merchants will accept PayPal as a payments option for in-store purchases.

For PayPal, local payments certainly makes sense. Online to offline sales is a big part of local commerce, and if PayPal can become a payments mechanism in the local market, it could be pay off in revenue for the company.

One competitor worth noting in the local payments space is Google Checkout. While Google Checkout doesn’t have as extensive of a reach as PayPal, Google Checkout has an ace in the hole when it comes to Google Places. Google Places allows local businesses to claim and edit a page, post realtime updates (eg, “happy hour tonight”), post reviews, create a custom QR code, and even offer coupons. And Google indexes and highlights these pages in search results, most recently launching a more integrated placement of Places page within Google search.

Google could easily turn on a transaction (such as a daily deal) for these merchants, and use Google
Checkout as the payments mechanism. The same experience could extend to mobile phones.

The advantage Google has over PayPal is that with Places, these relationships with local merchants are already built into the search giants business. At last count a few months ago, Google had Places pages in place for over 4 million businesses but I’m sure this number is higher. PayPal on the other hand will have to forge new relationships with all these local businesses to get them on board with their payments platform. Not only do they have to find the businesses, but PayPal has to teach them how to use their mobile apps as a payment mechanism. Scaling PayPal’s local feature will be a huge endeavor for the company, which is why PayPal is testing the feature out in a limited market in the San Francisco.

This why it makes sense for PayPal to form partnerships on its local endeavor. Google is an unlikely partner considering that the company already has its own payments platform. Facebook Places could be a potential partner (PayPal is already a micropayments partner for the social network’s virtual currency platform Credits). Facebook is rumored to be turning on a deals feature for Places and PayPal could be a way to process these payments. And Groupon is rumored to be brokering a payments deal with PayPal as well.

So while Google Checkout still doesn’t have the sort of users numbers that PayPal does in the payments area, Google has much more in the war chest in terms of local. With local up for grabs, the battle between the two payments platform just got a whole lot more interesting.

• Yoono Nows Plays Nice With YouTube, Chrome Extension On The Way
• YC-Funded Nowmov: Sit Back, Relax, And Watch An Endless Stream Of…