It’s like Michael Jordan endorsing your basketball career.

With Visa Inc. announcing today it will acquire a virtual goods monetization platform for $190 million in cash, the digital mobile commerce scene just got a lot more affirmation about its growth potential.

PlaySpan, the company Visa says it expects to fully acquire by 2Q 2011, allows companies to make money from virtual goods purchases within online games, digital media, mobile apps and social networks. Though this acquisition news is important in of itself considering Visa’s size, what is also worth noting is the stream of news unfolding within the in-app payment scene within the last few weeks, including:

• Popular Angry Birds game leaks ‘Bad Piggy Bank,’ an in-app Android payment system; and
• Google’s Android mobile OS unit developed a system for in-app payments.

All three announcements, headlining with Visa’s news, indicate that the industry should really accelerate soon, and that’s big news considering that the newer digital goods niche is already at a healthy pace. Visa reports that not only did the market generate an estimated $25 billion in consumer spending globally in 2010, but forecasts the niche to hit $280 billion by 2014, citing a PwC Global and Forrester Research data.