SEOUL -- KB Kookmin Bank, a major commercial bank in South Korea, has established a branch in virtual space to develop new financial services using virtual reality technology. It will be used as financial education content for teenagers and serve as a metaverse testbed to experience and accumulate new technologies.
KB said it has worked with Sharebox, a VR content startup, to develop user interface and interaction based on head-mounted display (HMD) devices to provide differentiated customer experiences such as one-on-one counseling functions. Personalized financial information can be inquired at my page menu, while simple financial transactions are possible at the personal window. The VIP lounge allows customers to experience investment propensity analysis and portfolio design through consultation.
"The purpose is to preemptively respond to financial changes in the upcoming metaverse era and internalize new financial service experiments and technology capabilities," KB's chief IT officer Yoon Jin-soo said. "In the future, we will conduct various financial experiments such as actual transaction tests through API linkage." An application programming interface (API) is a computing interface that defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries. It is needed in the process of establishing a digital bank and a business model linked to various external platforms.
The metaverse allows users to engage in various activities without physical restrictions by offering virtually-created spaces. Users can experience the virtual world by creating their own avatars. Digital clones of stores, buildings and characters are recreated in metaverse environments.