{"id":2640,"date":"2022-08-10T08:51:29","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T08:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"\/blog\/?p=2640"},"modified":"2024-04-30T09:23:01","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T09:23:01","slug":"metaverse-payment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/blog\/2022\/08\/metaverse-payment\/","title":{"rendered":"How FinTechs and BigTechs Bring Payment to the Metaverse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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trimplement co-founder Natallia Martchouk takes us on a trip through the thrilling prospects of payments in the metaverse.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Metaverse has been one of the hottest topics in business and tech in the last few months. Is this only a buzzword and a hype or does it have a real longer-term potential to become the \u201cnext big thing\u201d? You can find supporters for both opinions. However, a lot of big consultancy companies believe that there is no way to fail for the Metaverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, according to CB Insights<\/a> \u201cthe metaverse could represent a $1T market by the end of the decade\u201d. Deloitte has published a white paper about the potential of the Metaverse<\/a> and they believe in even higher numbers: \u201cThe metaverse may become a paradigm shift for consumer and enterprise behavior, analogous to the introduction of smartphones. It could create a potentially massive new market, with recent estimates of the commercial opportunity as high as $13 trillion and five billion regular users by 2030.\u201d Accenture has launched the Accenture Metaverse Continuum<\/a> business group to help their clients to understand and make use of the Metaverse opportunities. Its head Paul Daugherty stated that \u201cThe next generation of the internet is unfolding and will drive a new wave of digital transformation far greater than what we\u2019ve seen to date, transforming the way we all live and work\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m also rather on the optimistic side of supporters believing that Metaverse is not the hype but a next step in the technological, social and economical development of mankind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, before we analyze the current development status and prospects of the Metaverse, paying special attention to the payment topics, let\u2019s review what \u201cMetaverse\u201d actually means and how it is different from \u201cWeb 3.0\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

What Does \u201cMetaverse\u201d Mean? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The term Metaverse (Meta + Universe) was introduced by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash\u201d. The Metaverse of Stephenson is an urban virtual world, to which the users have access via their own private or public terminals and appear there in the form of avatars. Neal Stephenson was not the only one who wrote down his vision about the future of virtual reality in the form of a literary work. There are other examples like the science fiction tetralogy \u201cOtherland\u201d (1996-2001) by Tad Williams or \u201cReady Player One\u201d (2011) by Ernest Cline (all of them worth reading).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probably one of those novels inspired the creators of the virtual reality project \u201cSecond Life<\/a>\u201d. What was a science fiction novel in 1992 became a reality in 2003. The users of \u201cSecond Life\u201d can create avatars which interact with places, objects and each other like in the real world: they can build, create and trade virtual property and services. Of course, \u201cSecond Life\u201d is not the very first virtual environment platform. The roots of virtual reality lie in the gaming industry and are much older than the \u201cSecond Life\u201d. Just to give you some more recent Metaverse project examples one should mention modern platforms and games like Decentraland, Sandbox, Roblox, Fortnite or World of Warcraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no single definition of Metaverse, though most people agree that Metaverse is a concept, an idea, a vision. It\u2019s not a concrete technology or product, not a single platform or company (so no, Meta isn\u2019t the owner of the Metaverse and doesn\u2019t have exclusive rights to use this term). The Metaverse allows people to embed 3D virtual worlds into their real life, combining the ideas of virtual reality and digital second life. It won\u2019t likely completely replace real life, it will create an extended reality, where the people \u201clive\u201d in both worlds getting the best experiences of both. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How is Metaverse different from Web 3.0?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes the term \u201cMetaverse\u201d is mixed up and used interchangeably with Web 3.0. But they are not synonyms. Web 3.0 is basically the next generation of internet architecture. We expect it to be decentralized (based on blockchain or other peer-to-peer technologies unlike the server-client-based Web 2.0), and we expect it to be data- and privacy-centric, where the user decides what data he would like to share with whom, when and how. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also another important aspect of Web 3.0: The creation of highly personalized experiences for the user using automated content filtering through AI-driven applications and also more immersive and interactive media. It\u2019s hard to define a distinct boundary between both concepts as the Metaverse may use Web 3.0 technologies to build their new virtual worlds. And those virtual worlds can be seen as the new way of delivering content in Web 3.0. So let\u2019s say these 2 terms are interconnected, related to each other but not equal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Are the Building Blocks of the Metaverse?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So we just ascertained that Metaverse is offering users a possibility to integrate virtual reality into the real world, their daily life. The purpose of using it may be different, it may have a gaming character, it may help to fulfill some daily life tasks (like shopping), it may provide new ways of businesses and for the work collaboration (visiting conferences, meeting with customers or colleagues) or it may offer new opportunities how to spend your spare time (visiting concerts or museums, traveling). So it\u2019s an extension of the real world that has no physical limits, only technological ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Metaverse can combine and offer thousands of virtual worlds with their own products, goods and services. But can we bring more structure into this concept to make it more tangible? Can we identify some areas, layers and components of the Metaverse? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an article about the Metaverse<\/a> and its impact on the financial space VISA defines 4 big areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n