Magnati, a regional leader in the payment solutions industry, is launching Magnati-MetaV, the region’s first metaverse marketplace that enables users to experience e-commerce in a new and immersive way. It will offer Middle East retailers a more immersive way of reaching their customers through co-created virtual stores.
The platform seeks to shift behavioral patterns from “electronic commerce” to “experiential commerce”, with a new virtual world that provides users with richer visual and sensory information, as well as improved quality of information. Magnati-MetaV aims to accelerate the move from two-dimensional to multi-dimensional online commerce by enabling consumers to shop, learn, play games, attend concerts, and more through a seamless online experience.
Users will be able to explore, pick up, and purchase products across a mix of retail categories, the company said in a release, including fashion, groceries, gaming, technology, and more. They can also buy tickets and sign up for virtual events.
“The future of payments is all about being frictionless. Payments will no longer simply be transactional or an additional step in the process, but instead, will interact with customers along multiple touchpoints in a way that saves them time and hassle,” Magnati’s chief executive officer Ramana Kumar said.
“Leveraging Magnati’s leading payments and metaverse technology, UAE retailers can build functioning, easily accessible virtual worlds on our metaverse platform, opening opportunities to generate new revenue or to provide faster service. While shopping in Magnati-MetaV will feel entirely new, the payment experience will be completely familiar to anybody who has ever paid by cards or wallets,” he added.
According to Kumar, the platform will help e-commerce merchants address problems such as high rates of returns and exchanges. Magnati, the payments business unit of First Abu Dhabi Bank, has fully integrated the metaverse with traditional payment networks for consumers to better access the growing e-commerce sector. “It is not a new fad — it is a necessity because people want to visualize, see and be very close to reality,” said Ramana Kumar.
“We are transforming e-commerce from electronic commerce to experiential commerce, where customers can clearly visualize, feel and know what they are paying for; where merchants can break frontiers for new business growth,” he said. The platform provides users with “richer visual and sensory information” about their online purchases, Kumar said, alluding to a global trend that puts metaverse applications in the spotlight. The value of the global metaverse market is expected to exceed $1.6 trillion by 2030.
