Financial behemoth Fidelity Investments launched a gamified financial education platform in the metaverse, to attract the next generation of customers. The platform, launched in Decentraland, comes on the heels of the brokerage firm’s launch of its Fidelity Metaverse exchange-traded fund (ETF), FMET.

                By                    Yaёl Bizouati-Kennedy

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In the Invest Quest at The Fidelity Stack, users navigate through a multi-floor virtual space while collecting glowing orbs and learning about stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs, including the new Fidelity Metaverse ETF, Condon added.

“The goal of the Invest Quest at The Fidelity Stack is to bring education on financial topics to life in new and unique ways. As users traverse the space, they encounter educational elements focused on stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, and the components of the new Fidelity Metaverse ETF,” Condon said.

Asked about what prompted the idea, Condon said that Fidelity has a legacy of innovation and that the firm’s journey into the metaverse began earlier this year, with a live virtual discussion on cryptocurrencies and the metaverse.

Condon said that since launching, they added a “POAP” station (Proof Of Attendance Protocol) where visitors can claim a badge for having explored The Fidelity Stack. Asked what further features will be added, Condon said that “we will continue to learn from how users engage with the space.”

“We welcome this! It’s clear that the Web2 world – the FAANGs, as they call them – have hit their peak when it comes to their traditional offerings, and that new growth will be driven by Web3 innovation. By tapping into Web3, Fidelity can increase their exposure to new, high growth asset classes,” McKenna said. “I suspect a huge aspect of these emerging metaverse worlds will be the financialization of everything, including games.”

According to McKenna, it’s yet unclear how such games will evolve, or how their incentive structures will be able to attract millions of users, but the amount of creativity in the Web3 space – particularly when it comes to play-to-earn games and NFTs – is just immense. 

“The people at Fidelity, to their credit, see this opportunity. So the potential for them to be leaders in this space is very high,” McKenna added. 

The sentiment was echoed by several experts, who view Fidelity’s move as a harbinger of things to come for the financial world. 

“Gameifiying their metaverse location, at least to a certain extent, will make it more appealing,” he said. “One of the best things about the metaverse is that nothing ever needs to be boring, even learning about financial instruments. I suspect that other brands will pick up on this and make their metaverse offerings more interesting and start to really take advantage of being in a virtual world where anything is possible.”

In terms of the Metaverse ETF Fidelity which was launched on April 21, the firm said it can help investors invest in the evolution and future of the internet by providing access to companies that develop, manufacture, distribute, or sell products or services related to establishing and enabling the metaverse, such as computing hardware and components, digital infrastructure, design and engineering software, gaming technology and software, web development and content services, and smartphone and wearable technology​.

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He added that this new passively managed ETF will have an expense ratio of 0.39%, the lowest available for an ETF of its kind.