What are Meta’s fintech plans in the metaverse?

According to Meta’s Head of Fintech, Stephane Kasriel, the company is rebranding Facebook Pay as Meta Pay to emphasize interoperability across its platforms, and to reflect Meta’s investment in the metaverse. People across 160 countries currently use Facebook Pay.

Why should we care?
Meta is unabashedly enthusiastic about the metaverse in this rebranding announcement, but also hints at some of the issues it might encounter along the way. “Designing products and infrastructure with the metaverse in mind today will help facilitate innovation that delivers greater access and real cost savings—before the metaverse even becomes mainstream,” Kasriel said. “Now is the time to lay down the building blocks for the future. Because once that foundation is in place, the potential of the metaverse, and where it can take fintech next, will be limitless.” Beyond the (expensive) assumption that the metaverse will ever take off, Kasriel’s announcement has another shortcoming in terms of identity verification. “We’re looking at… how you can prove who you are and carry that identity into different experiences in the metaverse,” he said. With almost 1 billion people lacking official ID worldwide, it’s hard to gauge how Meta can comply with AML/KYC requirements at scale—especially given persistent attempts to use the metaverse for fraud and scams. (Just yesterday, regulators from 5 U.S. states issued an emergency order to shut down a metaverse casino with Russian ties that falsely claimed to be associated with rapper Snoop Dogg.) Meta may have a rosy outlook on the metaverse, but realities—and the regulatory framework needed for safe payments—lag behind those expectations.