Mastercard Could Be Preparing To Enter The Metaverse

One of the biggest banking institutions in America predicts that the metaverse will be a $13 trillion industry by 2030.

The global financial institution Mastercard is preparing for the metaverse economy through 15 trademarks applications that would position them as the biggest payment facilitator for a virtual world powered by crypto, fintech (financial technology), and all metaverse eCommerce technologies. 

The news was discovered this past week when USPTO licensed trademark attorney and specialist in intellectual property Mike Kondoudis tweeted out the details of several trademark filings that included the Mastercard name, the company’s “Circles” logo, and “Priceless” slogan. The tweet also included details such as NFT backed media, payment processing in the metaverse, marketplaces for digital goods + NFTs, and eCommerce transactions in the metaverse.

This past April, Citibank predicted that the metaverse economy could be worth as much as $13T by 2030. There are a lot of big opportunities here for brands and industries. Many are in the early stages of establishing their digital twin in the metaverse. This includes Nike, Wendy’s, The Gap, Walmart, and Mcdonald’s. 

This movement into the metaverse isn’t just impacting the food, retail, and fashion industries. Almost every type of business is looking at the metaverse and digital twinning as a new way to do business with their consumers, extend their B2B relationships, and recruit, onboard, and train new and current employees.

Even the higher ed industry sees the potential of the metaverse. Several colleges recently announced that they are opening up their own Metaversities, unique digital twins of their campuses where students can attend class and buy virtual college sweatshirts remotely.

Earlier in 2022, Mastercard partnered with Coinbase to create an NFT marketplace that will allow you to use your Coinbase wallet to pay for digital goods using a Mastercard debit or credit card. 

Mastercard is not alone in this race. The global banking institution, HSBC just announced that they were actually closing almost 70 real-world branches in the UK to focus on establishing their digital twin in the metaverse. Just recently the company opened a new metaverse investment portfolio, while JP Morgan, PayPal, and Visa are all also in the race to establish their own digital twin. 

Through Mastercards trademark filing, the company had 4 key application details for their footprint in Web3 that they feel will be fruitful for their metaverse endeavors. 

• “Downloadable music files authenticated by non-fungible tokens (NFTs); downloadable multimedia files containing artwork, text, audio, and video authenticated by non-fungible tokens (NFTs);…E-commerce software to allow users to perform electronic business transactions in the metaverse and other virtual worlds”

• “Marketplaces for digital goods and NFT backed media”

• “Processing of virtual credit card, virtual debit card, virtual prepaid card, and virtual payment card transactions in the metaverse… Payment processing services, namely credit card, prepaid card, gift card, and payment card transaction processing services in the metaverse; Providing financial information in the metaverse and other virtual worlds”

• “Events and performances in the metaverse in the fields of finance, cryptocurrency, and NFTs”

• “Online communities for digital assets, NFTs, metaverse and virtual worlds”

This is just the beginning of where the metaverse is going. These patents show how businesses, brands, and industries will all benefit from having a digital twin in the virtual space. As of today, the number of U.S. NFT trademark applications has surpassed the number filed last year. In 2020 the U.S. patent office saw 23 applications filed, in 2021 there were a total of 1,965 filed. So far in 2022, there are 1,967 applications filed and that number is climbing rapidly. 

There’s a lot of investment and movement in the metaverse right now, and Mastercard is preparing itself to be there to process those payments through an experience that is “Priceless”.

Image Credit: Mastercard

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