Offering a New Experience, Bank Mandiri is Ready to Connect Immersive Bank and Virtual Services

After a busy banking transformation into the digital realm, the national banking industry is now entering a new phase by steadily entering the virtual reality world, the Metaverse.

This exploration is carried out to meet all customer needs and offer a different experience from conventional and digital banking in general. With the AR, VR, and AI technologies offered, Metaverse is expected to be able to realize interactions in the banking sector in the virtual world just like in real life. 

Bank Mandiri prepares to expand into Metaverse

To build the future of the national banking world and realize beyond banking vision, Mandiri Bank plans to innovate by expanding its digital services into the world of Metaverse.

Is known recently (16/3), this gold-banded bank has announced a business expansion plan into the metaverse by signing a memorandum of understanding with WIR Group, a company that focuses on Metaverse technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Artificial Intelligent.

Director of Information Technology PT Bank Mandiri, Tbk (Persero), Timothy Utama, in talkshow entitled "The Future of Immersive Livin' Experience in Metaverse” stated that the concept promoted in Metaverse opens up as much opportunities as possible for Bank Mandiri's financial services, ranging from savings and loans, payment transactions, trade, service basic banking to advanced banking, to be able to attend to serve customers without being limited by physical space.

“This Metaverse concept is like parallel universes from the real world, where in the future we will not only present banking services as they currently exist in the real world, but we can also bring innovations that do not yet exist, beyond banking. "

Pak Tim, as Timothy is usually called, explained that the work on Bank Mandiri's expansion to Metaverse was still in the early stages and needed a comprehensive plan. In addition, it is hoped that with this plan, Bank Mandiri can help encourage the growth of Indonesia's digital economy in accordance with the government's vision.

“This metaverse is still at the early stage, we still need to learn. However, we see this community in the Metaverse can be very large and if we can collaborate with them, business opportunities can be created and will be win-win solution for the community and Bank Mandiri. The next innovations we are planning at Livin' by Mandiri, I think it has the potential to collaborate on Metaverse as well,” explained Tim.

Nevertheless, we can see the prototype model of Metaverse Indonesia that will be developed at the Digital Transformation Expo (DTE) exhibition at the G20 event which will take place this year in Bali.

Metaverse and the regulations behind it

Say "Metaverse” intensively became a conversation after the world giant Facebook, announced the change of its name to “META”. The concept of the metaverse that has been around for a long time is actually found in many game. Example game based web, second life which offers virtual interaction using avatars. 

Not only for entertainment, some experts argue that this Metaverse also has the potential to give birth many new economic opportunities. Especially with the emergence of breakthroughs from several banking industry giants who are starting to explore the Metaverse. Players in this sector will be challenged to create a very impressive trading experience in the world of 3D virtual reality.

Meanwhile, to prepare for the regulation and supervision of this new business model, OJK as the regulator is still learning more about the potential of the financial industry in the Metaverse. OJK is also willing to provide sandbox platform as a means of testing innovations before they are launched to the public. This is done in the spirit that OJK needs toanticipate all possibilities that arise from development Metaverse world that is used by banks and other financial institutions.