Meta will introduce a digital wallet for use in the metaverse, as part of its Meta Pay (formerly Facebook Pay) service.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the news in a post shared to his Facebook account. Zuckerberg wrote that the company’s existing service, Facebook Pay, is now Meta Pay — in line with the brand changes taking place across the year. Zuckerberg also indicated that Meta Pay will soon include “a wallet for the metaverse that lets you securely manage your identity, what you own, and how you pay.”
He said that this will let you purchase digital items — “digital clothing, art, videos, music, experiences, virtual events” — with some form of proof of ownership. Zuckerberg said this would be important for using those items across different services:
Ideally, you should be able to sign into any metaverse experience and everything you’ve bought should be right there. There’s a long way to get there, but this kind of interoperability will deliver much better experiences for people and larger opportunities for creators.
Zuckerberg’s remarks on long-term “interoperability” are intriguing, and could be referencing functionality that works across a wider range of products from different companies, not just Meta. Just a few days ago, plans were announced for a new metaverse standards forum, with participation from Microsoft, Meta, Adobe, Epic Games, Unity, NVIDIA, and much more. This announcement is the latest is a string of updates from Meta and Zuckerberg over the last few weeks. Earlier this week, Meta announced a digital storefront for avatar clothing, coming soon to VR.The company also gave a peek at new research developments for VR display technology, including retinal resolution and HDR prototype headsets.
