- Walmart is making a metaverse entry with ambitions to develop its own virtual reality, bitcoins and NFTs.
- The retail giant filed for several patents showing its intention to create and market virtual products.
- The Masterminds running Walmart believe there is a strong enough demand for customers to buy and sell virtual products that they will embrace a bizarre simulation.
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is reportedly embracing cryptocurrency, NFTs, and more as they join the Metaverse with a new business endeavor that combines VR gaming, bitcoin, and NFTs, according to seven recent patent filings.
Walmart submitted the applications on December 30, 2021, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The trademarks outline several potential applications that Walmart may pursue that embrace the expanding realm of Web 3.0.
A “downloadable e-commerce program” is described in one patent. It would give users access to a “virtual marketplace” that accepts virtual and digital currency, enabling them to conduct business transactions in the Metaverse.
When a video produced by Mutual Mobile resurfaced on Twitter and went viral, it illustrated this potential market. Virtual Walmart Shopping experience tech demo using virtual reality technology, Oculus, is showcased in this video.
Virtual Walmart Shopping Explained
This video demonstrates how the user can manipulate specific products as tangible items placed within a virtual representation of an actual shopping cart, with Full Motion Video “style cutscenes” employees offering unsolicited feedback and shoppers swarming the aisle. This differs from the traditional e-commerce experience, which requires clicking on a picture of an item to add it to a cart. Unbelievably, this video also indicates that removing products from your cart means putting them back on the store’s shelves where they belong.
Walmart filed another patent application focusing on financial services, namely, offering a virtual currency that incorporates both “trade” and “issuance” of “a virtual currency in the realm of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)” for usage by members of an online community.
From this, Walmart’s suggested platform would enable them to create their own NFTs for trading and support the exchange of other NFTs via an integrated wallet. Based on the tech demo, these NFTs would most likely be displayed on the gift card rack and must be physically redeemed by scratching the foil off with a Walmart Coin.
This is hardly a hasty choice made by a company with a valuation of close to $400 billion, as evidenced by the mentioned tech demo being produced four years before the trademark application. Instead, this is the latest stage of a more excellent picture to establish territory within the Metaverse, which is still primarily an abstract idea.
Walmart Wants More Than Just Crypto
Walmart is embracing cryptocurrency, but it’s evident that it wants a much more engaged experience than other businesses in the sector is prepared to explore when contrasted with the somewhat subdued rollout of NFTs by rival retail company Gap.
Walmart “continually explores how emerging technology may affect future shopping experiences.” It opted not to comment on the specific trademark applications.
The company continued:
“We constantly test new ideas.” Some ideas become products or services that are sold to customers. And others we evaluate, refine, and learn from.”
The evidence currently in the public domain indicates that the masterminds behind Walmart strongly believe there is enough demand for customers to buy and sell virtual goods that they will consent to a great simulation that combines the worst aspects of the contemporary shopping experience with the “clumsiest” form of modern game design.
Retailers and brands like Walmart may want to invest in such projects because they may open up new revenue sources. This is according to a CB Insights report.
The report claimed that businesses might “tokenize” physical goods and services by launching NFTs to lower the price of online transactions.
