Launched in 2019, Facebook Pay, Meta’s online payment system, will change its name. To match the company’s new identity, the transaction service will simply be renamed Meta Pay. Stephane Kasriel, fintech director at Meta, explained on May 11 the objectives of this service in relation to the metaverse.
Meta designs all of its products with the metaverse in mind
Beyond the name change, Meta wants to improve the payment system it already offered with Facebook Pay. Mark Zuckerbeg’s company is not going to seek to extend Meta Pay to more countries for the moment, it first wants to make it more efficient in the 160 countries where it is already available. The primary objective is to design the outlines of a transaction device that can be easily transplanted into the metaverse.
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” Designing our products and infrastructures with the metaverse in mind will help us facilitate the implementation of more accessible and inexpensive innovations, even before the metaverse becomes mainstream. “, explains Stéphane Kasriel, adding that “ once the foundations are in place, the potential of the metaverse, as well as its benefits for fintech, will be endless. »
Currently Facebook Pay allows you to make purchases via the Facebook marketplace and Instagram. Regarding Meta Pay, the project is still in the design stage for the transaction experience in the metaverse. The company is thinking of a way to prove the identity of people in the metaverse and keep it from one virtual experience to another.
A future economic model still at the experimental stage
The tech giant is also looking at a way for users to store their digital assets and carry them with them. He also wants to allow users to pay easily and with the method that suits them, whether in the context of a transaction between friends, or with companies, creators.
The timing of this announcement is particular, since on May 12, Meta announced that it was going to be forced to reduce the budget of Reality Labs, its division dedicated to the development of the metaverse and associated technologies. This results in the cancellation of certain projects, even if the company has not yet specified which ones are concerned.
The Diem fiasco, the cryptocurrency designed by Meta and sold to Silvergate bank in early 2022, has not eroded the company’s ambitions. By announcing the arrival of NFTs, first on Instagram, then on Facebook, Meta is experimenting with the sale of digital goods via cryptocurrencies. Associated with its Meta Pay service, the silhouette of the future economic model of the metaverse imagined by Mark Zuckerberg is beginning to take shape.