Virtual Payments Key to Metaverse and Gaming Success

The gaming industry will play a prominent role in the metaverse’s early development.

The metaverse, in turn, will similarly transform future gaming experiences.

This goes beyond the two-way impact that multiplayer games and platforms like Minecraft, Fortnite, Roblox and others have already had in socializing the concept of virtual worlds where players meet to play games, interact with personalized avatars and transact over digitally native ecosystems into the mainstream.

At the center of it all, and essential to making the most of the burgeoning metaverse opportunity, regardless of industry, is the establishment of a future-proof payment infrastructure for this new fusion of spatial computing and the Internet that aims to be the next platform to become for people. connectivity.

The metaverse will fundamentally consolidate the various elements of daily life through a vast system of interconnected networks, combining real world and virtual events into a comprehensive digital landscape enabling interactive, immersive and social experiences across 3D web spaces.

Key to bridging the gap between existing physical and emerging digital worlds, as well as critical to connecting metaverse platforms, is establishing a functional, flexible and agile payment architecture.

This is according to research in PYMNTS’ January 2023 Playbook, “Enter the Metaverse: The Next Frontier of Digital Commerce,” which shows how innovators are using payments to make the most of the metaverse opportunity.

Just as in-game purchases have changed the gaming industry, virtual transaction capabilities will define the broader use cases of the metaverse and make it a profitable new medium for generating income.

Web3’s game engine

The metaverse represents a combinatorial technology powered by a confluence of emerging, next-generation capabilities, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), edge computing, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), advanced real-time connectivity, geospatial 3D graphics systems, and other still emerging, future-proof advances.

To date, innovative VR and AR technology is still largely the province of games – although, as previously covered by PYMNTS, emerging applications across sectors such as Industry 4.0 and healthcare is gaining steam and seems to be entering the mainstream in the near future.

Critical to the immersive scale of the metaverse is the application of real-world physics to 3D digital assets, ensuring that rendered objects behave similarly to how they would in the physical world as entities subject to natural laws.

Coders or software engineers working for game studios have the most robust experience in programming virtual worlds that depend on tangible cause-and-effect frameworks, meaning that so-called “game engine” technologies will be instrumental to the development of usable 3D metaverse platforms that rest. on supportive, adaptive architectures powered by collaborative geospatial computing.

Another structural element of games that will be key to metaverse growth is that of effective in-game payment systems that support virtual additional assets such as skins, clothing, weapons, jewelry, and other accessories that, once purchased, along with players’ digital characters travel. across platforms and allow users to express themselves individually as play becomes a digital stand-in for real social spaces and communities.

The metaverse will take this new e-commerce landscape, centered around wearable digital assets, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), to new heights.

Dealing with the Metaverse

After the heart broken of some of their players certain video games have used in-game purchases and virtual wearables as a major revenue driver.

Within the metaverse, many opportunities exist for users to generate income streams. Play-to-earn (P2E) is one way game studios and other companies are approaching the potential of the metaverse by allowing users to earn assets through quests and other tasks, and then providing a marketplace for those assets to to be bought and sold.

Fast, frictionless connections to banking infrastructure help fuel these microtransactions, enabling players and other platform users to make real-time payments across games, virtual worlds or digital marketplaces.

Additionally, most of the most common metaverse platforms are built on blockchain technology, making cryptocurrency payment capabilities a natural complement.

Because the metaverse is still in its infancy, businesses must ensure that their payment infrastructure can support multiple payment options and allow for the addition and integration of new methods as they arise.

PYMNTS February 2023 Report “Navigating the new e-commerce landscape: modernizing payments for marketplaces, games, the metaverse and beyond,” finds that 40% of millennials and Gen Z consumers show a strong interest in the metaverse.

This digitally native generation cohort has a high familiarity with the use of digital wallets and is comfortable transacting virtually and moving securely between digital platforms, using their online identities as transaction triggers.

Just like in the physical world, PYMNTS research claims that real-time payment capabilities will be at the heart of metaverse innovations.

While Meta loses over $1 billion a month According to its metaverse strategy according to the company’s latest financial results, the tech giant intends to continue laying the foundation for realizing the metaverse’s potential.

The road to operational metaverse maturity is long, but there may be a pot of gold waiting at the end.

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