Fidelity Doubles Down on Metaverse With Financial Literacy Experience

Fidelity Investments is trying to expand its footprint in the metaverse with digital experiences meant to improve financial education for investors.  The firm said Thursday that it will launch Pancake Empire Tower Tycoon on the online game platform Roblox, as well as Bloom-o-rama in Decentraland. 

Users of Decentraland who visit Fidelity’s Bloom-o-rama will explore a hedge labyrinth to acquire saving, spending, and investment advice while completing quizzes along the way. A Power Petal Suit, Bibi’s Boost Pack, Bibi Shades, and Bloom-o-vision are all available to users.

Those who accomplish the activities in Bloom-o-rama can win $25,000 through Fidelity Bloom, a financial program that helps users build their savings.  Both debuts follow the company’s creation of Fidelity Stack in Decentraland last year, which included a dance floor and a rooftop garden. This experience debuted at the same time Fidelity launched two ETFs centered on the crypto business and the metaverse. 

“We apply a scan, try, and scale approach to innovation, and our experimentation with new platforms is no different,” Fidelity marketing chief Kathryn Condon said in a statement released on Thursday. 

The business, which had more than $10 trillion in assets under management by the end of 2022, also submitted trademark applications for a variety of metaverse services late last year. The docs also featured plans for an NFT marketplace.

While discussing trademark filings is premature, a Fidelity spokeswoman told Blockworks that they highlight the company’s continuous focus on “meeting customers where they are.”

“We are increasing the quantity and variety of our solutions, including our metaverse offerings and emerging technologies, that provide more ways for our customers to engage with us,” added the spokesman. Fidelity was hardly 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 income opportunity to be more than $1 trillion in a research issued at the time.

The next month, Thailand-based Siam Commercial Bank and London-based financial services giant HSBC purchased virtual real estate in the Sandbox metaverse.

Citibank experts predicted that the Web3 economy would be worth between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030 in March 2023. Still, the metaverse is in its infancy. Since changing its name to Meta, Facebook’s metaverse-focused company has lost billions of dollars quarter after quarter. Executives have stated that they will continue to invest in the industry because they see “significant long-term opportunities.”