Payments services provider Worldline is expanding its virtual shopping program.
The French company announced Tuesday (Dec. 12) the launch of the Worldline Metaverse Shopping Hub within the Spatial platform, an upgrade to its solution for merchants that hope to access the metaverse.
“Through this platform extension, online businesses will be able to benefit from major advances in graphical quality and accessibility across desktop, mobile and VR devices,” the company said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.
The company notes, as it has in the past, figures from McKinsey projecting that the metaverse eCommerce market will reach $2.6 trillion by the end of the decade.
With that in mind, Worldline says it has expanded its metaverse platform to give merchants without a presence in the virtual realm a way to engage customers.
“Understanding the transformative nature of gaming’s influence on the digital world, season two within Spatial will provide new customer engagement methods supportive of the digital environment’s pre-existing intuitive behaviors,” the release said.
“For example, merchants can incentivize users to participate in virtual scavenger hunts, allowing them to collect digital eggs in exchange for community card NFT rewards.”
With Spatial, customers can access the Metaverse through methods other than computers, such as virtual reality headsets and smartphones. Worldline’s solution also offers 150 payment methods, the release said, including digital wallets, mobile payments, cards and buy now, pay later services.
Meanwhile, Worldline said that Payone — its joint venture with the German Savings Banks Association — will distribute the metaverse solution in Germany and Austria starting in the first quarter of next year.
The extension of the program follows March’s debut of the Worldline Metaverse Shopping Mall in Decentraland.
The company last year unveiled its metaverse “showroom,” designed to connect online retail platforms and the various payment methods it offers.
Speaking with PYMNTS earlier this year, Sascha Münger, Worldline’s metaverse expert, noted that while it might take time for this virtual space to become the norm, it has major untapped potential to fuel another wave of payment innovation and improve customer experience.
“In the real world, you need easy and secure payment means, and the same is applicable in the metaverse,” said Münger. “And that is why I see the metaverse as an interesting commercial channel combined with both traditional and new innovative payment means.”
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