On Wednesday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook Pay is becoming Meta Pay. Meta Pay is the digital wallet for the metaverse, according to Zuckerberg. The rebranding is a “first step” toward Meta creating a digital wallet for its vision of the metaverse. In the immediate future, the software won’t change too much. You can still use it to send your friends and family members money over Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as to pay for purchases and donate to charitable causes. However, the long-term goal is for Meta Pay to become integrated into all aspects of the metaverse, allowing users to make purchases, donate to causes and more without ever leaving the virtual world. Thanks to the rebranding, Meta Pay is one step closer to becoming a reality.

Zuckerberg says he envisions a future where metapay will function as a universal wallet for all the digital items you buy or create in the metaverse. “Proof of ownership will be important, especially if you want to take some of these items with you across different services,” he said. “Ideally, you should be able to sign into any metaverse experience and everything you’ve bought should be right there.” metapay would store your items in a secure way and allow you to use them in any compatible service. This would give you more freedom to choose which services to use and make it easier to switch between them. metapay would also help developers create new Metaverse experiences by providing a way for them to sell digital goods and services. Zuckerberg says he wants metapay to be an open platform that anyone can build on top of.

Zuckerberg’s ultimate goal for Meta Pay is for it to become the de-facto wallet of the metaverse. He admits that the kind of interoperability he’s describing is still a long way away, but claims it would “deliver much better experiences for people and larger opportunities for creators.” It’s clear that Meta would stand to benefit the most from this ecosystem – the company recently confirmed that it’s taking a nearly 48 percent cut from digital asset sales in Horizon Worlds. A wallet app would be another way for the company to earn money from metaverse creators. Whether or not Zuckerberg’s vision comes to fruition remains to be seen, but it’s certainly an ambitious goal.