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When Facebook first welcomed 3rd party applications, Lending Club caused a stir with its peer-to-peer money exchange. While others like Prosper had paved the way for small online loans, only Lending Club dared to integrate its services into a social network. Today, Facecard aims to improve upon the model by expanding its pre-paid MasterCard service. As of tomorrow, the company will officially emerge from beta with a slew of new features including parental controls, alerts and most importantly, this Facebook application.

Facebook is a phenomenal success (at growing its network of users) and a miserable failure (at making money). Its attempts to make money have been mired in the Madison Avenue school of selling mass market stuff to consumers. This is fundamentally at odds with the trust-based, peer-to-peer ethos of social networking. If Facebook continues down this path, then the more it monetizes, the more it will drive users away. Luckily, Facebook has been handed a screamingly big and obvious opportunity that meets a massive need, will be welcomed by users, and is suited to the current economic crisis: Uncrunch America.