On Wednesday Mark Zuckerberg officially launched Meta Pay, a digital wallet for the metaverse. Zuckerberg said Meta Pay is exactly the same way Facebook Pay was, with improvements here and there to fit the idea of the metaverse.
“It’ll stay the same easy way to shop, send money, and donate to causes you care about on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and anywhere else you could use Facebook Pay. But beyond the current features, we’re working on something new: a wallet for the metaverse that lets you securely manage your identity, what you own, and how you pay,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.
Zuckerberg lists out specific ways that users will be able to use Meta Pay in the metaverse. These include buying art, videos, music, digital clothing, tickets to virtual events, and experiences.
“The more places you can easily use your digital goods, the more you’ll value them, which creates a bigger market for creators. The more easily you can transact, the bigger the opportunity for creators should get as well. We’re looking forward to building this out,” he said.
The wallet will be used for Meta’s metaverse platform; users will be able to “securely manage your identity, what you own, and how you pay.” It will still allow users to transact on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and other supported platforms. As The Verge concludes: “The concept of a wallet that proves you own digital items sounds a lot like crypto wallets that hold NFTs”.
“In the future, there will be all sorts of digital items you might want to create or buy — digital clothing, art, videos, music, experiences, virtual events, and more. Proof of ownership will be important, especially if you want to take some of these items with you across different services,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg said that they also want to explore interoperability on the digital wallet to make the experience better for everyone. “Ideally, you should be able to sign into any metaverse experience and everything you’ve bought should be right there,” he said.
“There’s a long way to get there, but this kind of interoperability will deliver much better experiences for people and larger opportunities for creators. That is, the more places you can easily use your digital goods, the more you’ll value them, which creates a bigger market for creators,” Zuckerberg explained.
As mentioned by Beingcrypto: “Earlier in the week, Microsoft, Meta, Epic Games, and 33 other companies agreed to collaborate on open standards for the metaverse. Called the Metaverse Standards Forum, the group will work on forming open, interoperable standards for augmented and virtual reality, geospatial, and 3D tech. The primary goal of the group is to discuss where a lack of interoperability is holding the emerging metaverse industry back. It is not surprising that these tech giants would want to collaborate on fundamentally interconnected technology, and the business potential itself is high, with over $600 billion in value projected by 2026″.
