CEO America Inc., the exclusive U.S. licensee of the Creditz Digital Currency System, has signed a licensing and marketing agreement with Platinum Studios Inc., a firm that adapts comic book characters for all media.

Platinum Studios will accept Creditz as a form of online and mobile micro-payment for its online shopping cart and future mobile comics application.

"In addition to retailers and e-tailers, digital content providers are a prime target market for Creditz Digital Currency," said Larry Bracco, chief marketing officer of CEO America, Los Angeles.

He expects that in the year ahead a large percentage of the Platinum community will become "micro-merchants," exchanging their art for real value in the form of Creditz Digital Currency.

The Platinum mobile comics application enables access to content such as comic books, wallpapers, animated screensavers, ringtones and mobile games.

There are also plans for a limited-edition Platinum Studios Creditz card that will serve as a branding tool.

"We believe this is the true beginning of direct monetization of digital content and we hope other digital content producers and distributors will see what we are doing and want to adopt this system as well," Mr. Bracco said.

Some of the titles in mobile comics application will be ''Hero By Night'' and ''KISS 4K." Also ''Bird and Worm,'' ''Creepy Carly,'' ''Kitty Litter,'' ''Model Operandi,'' ''Musical Farm,'' ''Necromantic,'' ''Peyote Highway'' and ''Stupid Users.''

Platinum Studios was unable to comment at press time.

Mr. Bracco said that several challenges are addressed here. Micro-payments for digital and mobile content is one.

"We have created our own payment 'rails,' so it is much easier and economical for us to conduct large amounts of small transactions," Mr. Bracco said.

Next, Creditz believes in the concept of incentivizing behavior, no matter how big or small the transaction. So it is addressing the concept of providing a loyalty application for the digital artist.

Finally, Creditz is allowing these artists to become micro-merchants without requiring a credit card or bank account.

"Imagine a 15-year-old artist selling his Flash animations to a fan base of 500 to 1,000 people every month for, say, 50 cents a month," Mr. Bracco said. "Well, to this artist, he is making $250 to $500 a month doing what he loves and learning business and marketing at the same time.

"This same scenario can play out for major content producers as well, such as TV programmers, musicians and even writers who want to sell content directly to their audience," he said.