Where does financial technology fit into the rapidly evolving world of virtual reality? Speaking at Money 20/20 in Europe this year an exec from Samsung, which is ploughing a lot of money into VR through its Gear headset, talked about pilots the firm is doing with banks.
Speaking at the event, Albert Creixell, head of financial services at Samsung Europe talked about the firm’s investment in WeVR and some of the ideas financial institutions are coming up with around integrating customer service in virtual reality.
“It’s creating VR content in a new way and that will have an impact in finance” says Creixell. “In the last year and a half we’ve been running pilots with banks to work out what we can do together. One of the big banks we work with has this idea of having VR space in city – somewhere like Starbucks. The idea is you could have a VR headset in the coffee shop and you just put it on to start engaging with a bank.”
The latest movement in the space may come from China, where e-commerce titan and the owner of Alipay, Alibaba, is reportedly working on bringing payments into VR retail.
The firm has reportedly told China Daily that its Ant Financial unit working on technology that will enable people to buy goods by making gestures like nodding their heads.
Alibaba has already created the Buy+ virtual store which focuses on letting shoppers browse and try on goods from the comfort of their sofa and is now working on a way to build payments into the experience.
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