Automated banking machines on the Metaverse
While the Metaverse promises to dematerialise exchanges and relationships, it is now home to an unprecedented model of automated banking machine. The British company Transak, a specialist in crypto-assets, is behind this offer, which reflects the hybrid potential of this new space. The initiative also underlines the extent to which this virtual universe is still a reassuring replica of the physical world to make itself accessible to all.
FACTS
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Transak presents an innovative concept based on Metavers to renew the customer experience around crypto-currencies. The company is installing digital currency dispensers in the virtual world.
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Presented as the first Metaverse ATMs, these cash machines will allow users to buy crypto-currencies and convert their money into virtual currencies.
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A first version of this ATM is currently being presented in a pilot phase within the Decentraland platform, which currently has almost 90,000 plots of land.
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Visitors to this virtual world are invited to go to the ATMs already deployed to make their "withdrawal". In reality, this operation requires a redirection phase to a crypto asset purchase site for the time being and therefore does not yet offer a fully integrated package. The situation should then quickly evolve and really facilitate transactions without leaving the Metaverse, at least after the first operation.
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The deployment of the terminals is offered to virtual land owners; Transak plans to remunerate itself by taking a commission on the transactions carried out via its devices and passing on part of it to the land owners.
CHALLENGES
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Creating bridges between worlds through a totally immersive experience: Transak is a world first, dematerialising an object known to most people and reflecting traditional finance. Although limited for the moment, this concept has the merit of creating a bridge between the physical and virtual worlds, prefiguring the immersive experience that is the real revolution that Metaverse brings.
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Democratising the use of crypto-currencies by relying on a known physical device: the installation of crypto dispensers represents for Transak a way to offer visitors to the Metaverse a tool they are already accustomed to. These ATMs can be used to "withdraw" crypto-currencies in the same way that traditional ATMs can be used to withdraw cash in the physical world. The company is proposing a hybrid model capable of reassuring users by using familiar codes, transposed to a virtual world. This is all the more crucial as crypto-currencies remain, for the time being, the main medium of the meta-currency economy and, more globally, of Web 3.0.
MARKET PERSPECTIVE
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After the crypto-asset crisis, the question of trust around the virtual universe and its currencies weighs all the more heavily in the balance of the democratisation of these innovations. Relying on the virtualisation of known concepts can contribute to this effort.