Banking Giant HSBC Partners With The Sandbox in Move to The Metaverse

British banking titan HSBC is partnering with The Sandbox for its new venture into the metaverse.

The Sandbox announced the partnership yesterday, revealing that the collaboration would help create opportunities for virtual communities across the world to engage with global financial services and sports communities in the metaverse.

Under the deal, HSBC will acquire a plot of LAND, the tokenized digital real estate within The Sandbox virtual world, which will “be developed to engage and connect with sports, esports and gaming enthusiasts.”

According to the announcement, the agreement will set the tone for more financial institutions to innovate in Web3 as consumer adoption demands "robust experiences in the metaverse through decentralized and gamified offerings,” adding that the global metaverse market is estimated to grow exponentially from $45.4 billion in 2019 to $1.5 trillion in 2030.

Suresh Balaji, Chief Marketing Officer, Asia-Pacific, HSBC, said:

“The metaverse is how people will experience Web3, the next generation of the Internet — using immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality and extended reality. At HSBC, we see great potential to create new experiences through emerging platforms, opening up a world of opportunity for our current and future customers and for the communities we serve.

Through our partnership with The Sandbox, we are making our foray into the metaverse, allowing us to create innovative brand experiences for new and existing customers. We’re excited to be working with our sports partners, brand ambassadors, and Animoca Brands to co-create experiences that are educational, inclusive and accessible.”

According to The Sandbox, HSBC will join a growing roster of other big brands in their metaverse, including Gucci, Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, The Walking Dead, Snoop Dogg, Adidas, Deadmau5, Steve Aoki, Richie Hawtin, The Smurfs, Care Bears, Atari, ZEPETO, and CryptoKitties.

Details of the HSBC and The Sandbox collaboration will be announced “in due course,” they said.

HSBC isn’t the first financial giant to give legitimacy to the potential of the metaverse. Last month, JPMorgan wrote an entire whitepaper on the new digital universe and revealed that they had already bought some space in Decentraland that they were using as a virtual lounge called the Onyx Lounge. The bank’s new experiment is located in Decentraland’s Metajuku shopping mall.

“In the metaverse, some of the existing services and business models we are familiar with will continue to exist, but the metaverse opens a whole new realm of ways to engage which we expect will lead to uniquely new services and business models. Not everything in the metaverse will be relevant for every business. However, there is little downside to taking the opportunity to explore.”