Quepasa, owner of the Latino online social network Quepasa.com and social game development studio Quepasa Games, and Mentez, the largest social gaming publisher in Latin America, have announced that Wonderful City – Rio is now available on Facebook. Wonderful City – Rio invites users to build their own virtual Rio de Janeiro, adapting the popular city-building game concept for Latin American audiences. Quepasa has previously launched the game on Quepasa and on Orkut in partnership with Mentez. Before starting the games the user is given the possibility to import his Orkut friends to join the game on Facebook. The feature reflects Orkut’s recent strong downward trend in Brazil where the network is heavily loosing users to Facebook.

Wonderful City – Rio has fast become a popular social game reaching over 1.3 million installs in May across the Orkut and Quepasa.com platforms. In addition, Mentez reports that Wonderful City – Rio has an average of 600,000 daily active users (DAU) and these users are very active issuing over 900,000 posts/updates on a daily basis. “Wonderful City – Rio is a great example that social gamers want games that are localized for their region,” said Quepasa CEO Abbott. ” Building on the current success of the popular city-building game, Wonderful City – Rio, Quepasa Games plans to release Mexican and Colombian versions of the game to increase exposure among broader Latin American audiences. Soon, social gamers in these countries will build their own virtual cities such as Mexico City and Cartagena and feature virtual items specifically localized for these countries.

Mentez, the leading social games publisher in Latin America, today announced they have further expanded their presence in Latin America with the launch of their first localized game in Spanish, Guerra Maya (Chinese developer Five Minutes’ Little War), for the Spanish version of Facebook. This is the first of a lineup of current games on Orkut that Mentez will be localizing. “Spanish-speaking Facebook Latin America has over 80 million users; this area is another huge market for us to play in,” said Mentez CEO Juan Franco. “The issuing of our first localized game for Spanish-speaking audiences is a great opportunity, since no other company currently does this in the region.”

In addition to the launch of the Spanish version of Little War, Mentez will be opening a new office in Mexico that will help focus the company’s efforts in Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. Now with offices both in Mexico and Colombia and presence in Argentina and Chile, Mentez has the capability to reach over two-thirds of the Spanish-speaking Latin America population on Facebook. According to a recent report by Playspan and SuperData Research, the virtual goods market in this region alone (excluding Brazil) currently is valued at $165.5 million. With Mentez’s proprietary monetization platform Paymentez, Latin American users can easily pay for virtual goods locally using local credit cards online, through bank transfers, and in person with cash at pharmacies, newsstands and Internet cafes. Recently, Zynga selected Mentez to sell Zynga Game Cards and PINS across the Paymentez network, which stretches from Mexico to Argentina.

Per capita credit card usage in Latin America remains low compared to North America, according to a March 2008 report from the International Trade Administration. The report estimates that Latin American countries like Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil have fewer than 1 credit card in circulation per person. That compares to more than 2.5 credit cards per person in the U.S. Localized items for Guerra Maya include pyramids and sites from the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, animals sacred to the Mayas like the quetzal, and the local agave plant as decorations. Currently, Mentez has over 11 million MAU on Facebook Spanish alone and expects this number to grow. The Mexico office located in Mexico City will house Mentez’s Latin America team and joins Mentez’s other global offices in Brazil, Colombia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Mentez, the leading social games publisher in Latin America, today officially announced they have partnered with Zynga, the world’s largest social games developer, to make it easier for Latin American players to fully enjoy Zynga’s most popular games. Through this partnership, Mentez will be a distributor of Zynga Game Cards and PINS at more than 1 million retail locations and Internet cafes across this fast growing geographic region. Mentez will begin selling Zynga Game Cards in Brazil on February 18th, followed by Mexico and other Latin American countries in the near future.

Known across the world for its widely popular games such as CityVille, FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Poker, Zynga is committed to continually enhancing players’ enjoyment and by offering dedicated game cards, Zynga will be providing new options for players throughout Latin America. Zynga Game Cards will be available in smaller currency values, which will give players more choices for amounts they want to spend on virtual goods within the game and will be available for use with Zynga’s most popular games. Mentez runs an alternative payments network in Latin American called Paymentez. Users can purchase game credits through Paymentez, using local credit cards online, through bank transfers, and in person with cash, at pharmacies, newsstands and Internet cafes. Zynga will sell Zynga Game Cards and PINS across the Paymentez network, which stretches from Mexico to Argentina.

The Paymentez platform launched to the public in mid-November 2009. The platform currently has 4 million active users, and is handling 650 transactions every second. To date, Paymentez has processed more than 8 million transactions. Paymentez currently accepts both offline and online forms of payments for virtual credits including credit cards, debit cards, online bank transfers, in-person bank transactions and in-person cash transactions at retail points of sale and Internet cafes, and prepaid game cards.

Per capita credit card usage in Latin America remains low compared to North America, according to a March 2008 report from the International Trade Administration. The report estimates that Latin American countries like Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil have fewer than 1 credit card in circulation per person. That compares to more than 2.5 credit cards per person in the U.S. According to comScore, there are 73MM and 32MM Facebook and Orkut monthly unique users in Latin America, respectively. Assuming that 40-50% of these users play social games, the market opportunity for social games in Latin America currently ranges from 42MM to 52MM unique users.