Fidelity Doubles Down on the Metaverse With Financial Literacy Experience
Fidelity Investments is looking to expand its footprint in the metaverse with a digital experience intended to enhance financial education for investors. The company said Thursday that it will launch Pancake Empire Tower Tycoon on its online game platform Roblox, as well as Bloom-o-rama on Decentraland.
Decentraland users who visit Fidelity’s Bloom-o-rama will explore the hedge maze for savings, spending, and investment advice while completing quizzes along the way. The Power Petal Suit, Bibi’s Boost Pack, Bibi Shades, and Bloom-o-vision are all available to users.
Those who complete activities on Bloom-o-rama can win $25,000 through Fidelity Bloom, a finance program that helps users build their savings. Both debuts follow the creation of the company’s Fidelity Stack in Decentraland last year, which includes a dance floor and rooftop garden. The experience debuted at the same time Fidelity launched two ETFs centered on crypto and metaverse businesses.
“We take a scan, try, and scale approach to innovation, and our experimentation with new platforms is no different,” said Fidelity chief marketing officer Kathryn Condon in a statement released Thursday.
The business, which has more than $10 trillion in assets under management at the end of 2022, also applied for a trademark for various metaverse services late last year. The document also outlines plans for the NFT market.
While discussing the trademark filings prematurely, a spokesperson for Fidelity told Blockworks they highlighted the company’s continued focus on “meeting customers where they are.”
“We are increasing the quantity and variety of our solutions, including our metaverse offerings and new technologies, which provide more ways for our customers to engage with us,” the spokesperson added. Fidelity isn’t the first traditional financial institution to venture into the metaverse.
In February 2022, JPMorgan opened a virtual lounge in Decentraland. The bank assessed the metaverse’s annual revenue opportunity at over $1 trillion in research released at the time.
The following month, Thailand-based Siam Commercial Bank and London-based financial services giant HSBC bought virtual real estate in the Sandbox metaverse.
Citibank experts predict that the Web3 economy will be worth between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030 in March 2023. However, the metaverse is still in its infancy. Since renaming Meta, the company focused on Facebook’s metaverse has lost billions of dollars quarter-over-quarter. The executives have stated that they will continue to invest in the industry as they see a “significant long-term opportunity”.
