Meta Pay officially launched, clarifying its ambitions

After an announcement linked to its name change last May, Meta Pay is now officially launched. This is an opportunity for the Meta group to specify the ambitions of its new payment body, largely dedicated to the new Metaverse environment.

FACTS

• Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook/Meta, has just published a post on his own social network to clarify the official launch of Meta Pay and, above all, its ambitions.

• And Meta's in-house alternative payment method is clearly identified as a tool dedicated to the Meta ecosystem as well as the new Metaverse environment.

• This digital wallet will allow users of the group's services (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger) to make purchases, send money and make donations.

• But the service will also be available to visitors of the Metaverse, in order to carry out the same actions in the new generation virtual ecosystem.

• It will not only focus on payment but plans to establish itself as a full-fledged wallet for them. Meta Pay will allow them to store key information such as proof of their digital identity and all their digital assets (such as NFTs for example).

• Meta Pay is also presented by its creator as an interoperable tool capable of bridging different virtual worlds, preserving the value of wallets from one digital world to another.

• These new features should be available in the near future.

CHALLENGES

• Renewing its model: As the world's leading social network, Facebook has long been working to perpetuate diversified activities (marketplace, means of payment) capable of capitalising on its strike force to impose in-house models on new markets. With varying degrees of success. Because the change of Facebook to Meta should make us forget that the group is losing ground in its core business (the network has lost subscribers) and that its diversified initiatives have met with a lot of resistance. This change of name reflects an urgent need to find a new way to remain relevant in its market.

• A new world, a new currency: This strategic shift by Facebook/Meta also illustrates the importance that the web giant attaches to the new environment of the Metaverse, a promised land for new digital activities. The question of payment in the Metaverse is a major one, since the environment is presented above all as a new space for exchange and sharing. It also offers a ready-made legitimacy for crypto-currencies, even though their integration into the real world remains contested.

• A virtual alternative to Wallets: In his definition of Meta Pay, Mark Zuckerberg defined the basis of a Meta Pay capable of imposing itself as a 100% digital version, adapted to the virtual world, but a real alternative to the current Apple Wallet, Google Wallet or Samsung Wallet that are offered in the physical world.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• Meta is now clarifying its ambitions at a time when the world of Metavers is still under construction. But the web giant seems to see it as a real Eldorado, a world more adapted to crypto-assets, which would offer all its place and legitimacy to an alternative wallet model, and if possible that of Meta.

• Other specialised players such as payments giant Worldline have seized the opportunity that payment represents in this new environment. Even if Worldline's solution is aimed more at merchants by offering them an acceptance solution, the enthusiasm of these players for this virtual universe should force its democratisation.