Suresh Kumar, the global chief technology officer of Walmart, explained the company’s favorable perspective on digital assets in a speech at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit on October 17. For both physical and virtual items, he predicted that “crypto will become an important part of how customers transact.” He also predicted that cryptocurrencies would significantly disrupt the future of consumer payment methods for both virtual and tangible items.
Additionally, Kumar predicted that a sizable portion of consumers would be reached by marketing via social media platforms like Facebook Live and the Metaverse and that cryptocurrency would play a significant role as a form of payment there.
This could explain Walmart’s latest entry into the Roblox Metaverse, Walmart Land, which was released in late September. The company also provides virtual retail items called “verch” for customers’ avatars in addition to hosting a variety of virtual experiences there, including games, a DJ booth, and a Ferris wheel.
However, in January’s patent filings, Walmart has previously indicated that it may look to create digital currencies, tokens, and NFTs in the Metaverse space at some point in the future. At this time, NFTs and crypto are not integrated with the Roblox metaverse.
Walmart wants to ensure that its services are as frictionless as possible for customers to use in order to transact, buy, and obtain value.
“When you specifically talk about crypto, it is going to be about the discovery of products, whether physical or virtual inside, either the Metaverse or upfront and then how people transact.”
Long-standing rumors about the multinational retail behemoth implementing support for cryptocurrency payments have only resulted in false alarms. Last September, a bogus agreement with Litecoin was revealed via a shady news release.