Digital Bank Mercobank Wants to Enter the Metaverse

The digital bank Mercobank says it plans to enter the NFT market, while also beginning to explore the metaverse.

“With the emergence of new innovative technologies ‘Metaverse’ and its platforms, the demand for non-face-to-face environments will certainly be on the rise,” the bank said in a news release Wednesday (Dec. 29).

“Mercobank, being an innovative bank, has begun putting strategies to develop virtual environments to enable its customers to access banking services online like the real world,” the bank said.

A metaverse is any digital world where people can create avatars, interact with others and do things like purchase land, create buildings and marketplaces, shop and play games.

How does cryptocurrency play a role? For one thing, blockchain offers an excellent foundation for a metaverse. Once data is recorded on a blockchain, hackers can’t change it and everything is viewable by the public.

More crucially, everything can be recorded onto a non-fungible token (NFT), which is unique, unchangeable and tradeable. Everything, from the metaverse store a company creates, to the products sold inside of it, to the avatars shopping there, are NFTs.

Read more: What’s a Metaverse, and Why is One Having a Fashion Show?

Speaking at a roundtable earlier this month, Mercobank CEO Ramon Vicente de Vera said his company has a “keen interest” in digital art.

“We as innovative banks are always interested in moving with the transformative changes in the digital space; NFTs and Metaverse will rapidly dominate the digital space, and most top companies have started jumping on the NFT train,” he said. “The bank is currently working alongside a top company that is not affiliated with the government to pilot its digital asset custody service.”

Mercobank will “be diving into the Metaverse,” de Vera added, “because it will definitely change the way we live, the way we travel, the way we interact with one another.”

Mercobank says it is looking into the possibility of selling NFTs. It also says it is positioned to manage financial transactions in the metaverse, “similar to real life.”