Metaverse And Its Impact On The Banking Sector
Technologies are being adopted at an ever-increasing rate.
The Internet took a long time to adapt, allowing businesses to establish an online presence and reach more customers with ease of use at home. In contrast, the smartphone took a shorter time to take off and enabled businesses to launch apps to reach more customers with a better experience.
This next revolutionary disruption in technology, the Metaverse, is driven by Blockchain, DeFi, NFT, Digital Currencies, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality.
Metaverse will provide a major advantage to the banking industry.
Internet-enabled internet banking. Smartphones enabled mobile banking. Metaverse will enable virtual banking with a more personalized and immersive experience.
A financial system is required anywhere there is an exchange of value, including virtual worlds. Internet and Smartphone applications were supported by online bank transfers, debit card/credit card payments, net banking, digital payments, and payment gateways.
Metaverse can leverage, the current infrastructure and scalable medium of exchange of the banking industry and evolving central bank digital currency.
Banks are therefore taking the lead in driving and adopting Metaverse-based virtual banking to provide a more personalized and immersive experience.
Benefits
- Customer Experience and Employee Experience: Banks can make use of AR, and VR technologies to provide an immersive experience in 3D to their customers through transactions through metaverse banking or virtual banking and for employees in delivering immersive learning experiences and onboarding remote employees as a community.
- Customer Engagement: Personalized services can be provided by banks virtually without the need for customers to visit the bank’s physical locations and engage them in meaningful new ways. Such engagement can offer personalized experiences to the customer and expand marketing and branding.
- New Products and Services: Potential for many innovative products and services involving digital payments, digital assets, and digital twins.
- Early Mover Advantage: Banks who believe in the potential of the metaverse are creating their presence in platforms such as The Sandbox or Decentraland, which provides a competitive advantage.
- Learning and Experimentation: As metaverse is in its early stages, banks are able to learn and experiment at a lower cost, which enables them to come up with innovative solutions around metaverse at an affordable cost.
- Marketing and Branding: Banks that move to the metaverse increase their brand value among the customers and particularly the younger generation with a keen interest in digital assets, digital currencies, NFT, etc. by engaging the customers in new meaningful ways to enable the expansion of marketing and branding, which helps to attract young talent with technical skills to build solutions around metaverse.
Few Metaverse adoption initiatives by banks
- JP Morgan is first bank to enter the metaverse with a virtual ‘Onyx lounge’
- Union Bank launches Metaverse Virtual Lounge and Open Banking Sandbox environment
- BNP Paribas, contributing to the development of Virtual Reality
- Bank of America is First in Industry to Launch Virtual Reality Training Program in Nearly 4,300 Financial Centers
- HSBC moves into the metaverse
Banks and Fintechs can use
- Augmented reality, virtual reality, digital currencies, NFT, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to build the metaverse that provides an immersive experience to the customers and employees;
- Analytics to understand and analyze how customers use virtual reality for banking services, and use this data to improve the services to meet the customer needs.
In the metaverse, digital banking will take on a whole new meaning. So are you ready for the new Avatar of Banking in the metaverse?
Article References:
https://bankingblog.accenture.com/ultimate-guide-to-banking-in-the-metaverse
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text above belong solely to the author, and don’t reflect the views of the author’s employer, organization, committee, or other group or individual.
