During his presentation, Suresh Kumar stated that crypto would be an effective payment method in the Metaverse and on social media. This is because customers will discover brand-new products through these areas.
Suresh Kumar, Walmart’s global chief tech officer, has called cryptocurrency a “major area” of disruption. This is especially true for how customers will pay for virtual goods in the future.
Kumar spoke at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit Oct. 17 and highlighted Walmart’s positive attitude towards digital assets. He stated that “crypto” will be an integral part of customers’ transactions for physical and virtual goods.
“I believe there are three main areas of disruption. Crypto is in the middle of all of this,” he explained, explaining that customers are changing how they discover products and get inspired by them.
Kumar suggested that the Metaverse will reach a large number of customers through live streams on social media platforms. This is because crypto could be a viable payment option in these types of areas.
“When you talk about crypto specifically, it will be about discovering products, whether they are physical or virtual inside or upfront and then how people transact.”
This may explain Walmart’s recent venture into Roblox Metaverse, which saw Walmart Land launch in September. There are a variety of virtual experiences offered by the company, including games, a DJ booth, and Ferris wheels. Users can also purchase virtual merchandise called “verch” through the company.
At this point, non fungible tokens (NFTs), and crypto cannot be integrated with Roblox’s metaverse.
Walmart previously stated in patent filings dating back to January that it might look into creating digital currencies and tokens in a Metaverse space in the near future.
We want to make it as easy for customers to transact and buy and get value from it. He said that a lot of disruption will be in the area of payment options and payment methods.
Rumours have circulated that the multinational retail giant is working to roll out crypto payment support. However, so far there have been no false alarms like the fake deal with Litecoin which was made via a questionable press release in September last year.
As of October 2021, around 200 Bitcoin ATMs were installed in Walmart stores in the United States. Plans are in place to increase that number to 8,000 at an unknown time.
