JP Morgan has become the first bank to join the metaverse, opening a virtual room on Decentraland, a decentralised virtual world.
The bank has opened the Onyx lounge, which according to Markets Insider, is in Metajuku, a virtual version of Tokyo’s Harajuku shopping district. In its room, it currently has an image of the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon and a tiger that wanders the halls.
Alongside the move to the metaverse, JP Morgan released a new report on the opportunities the metaverse holds. The report is aimed at helping people better understand what the metaverse is and why it is important for firms to get involved with.
In the paper, the bank explained that the success of building and scaling in the metaverse is through a robust and flexible financial ecosystem that lets people easily connect through the physical and virtual worlds. To which, it hopes its payments and financial infrastructure will allow that interoperability to grow.
It said, “We believe the existing virtual gaming landscape (each virtual world with its own population, GDP, in-game currency and digital assets) has elements that parallel the existing global economy. This is where our long-standing core competencies in crossborder payments, foreign exchange, financial assets creation, trading and safekeeping, in addition to our at-scale consumer foothold, can play a major role in the metaverse.”
JP Morgan added that it is enabling the gaming ecosystem through three core verticals. The first is industrialising game platform providers with bank-grade products and digital assets platform access. This includes offering enterprise-grade digital assets infrastructure, robust security and onboarding specialised products.
The next vertical is enabling game and content creators to commercialise creations. Its final vertical is scaling the metaverse industry across multiple currencies and payment methods.
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