DBS IT director Jimmy Ng said in an interview that in the past decade, the bank has spent about 730 million USD a year on areas such as cloud computing or artificial intelligence and will continue to continue to maintain this level of investment in the future.
The concept of metaverse is receiving strong support from the likes of Microsoft and Meta (Facebook’s parent company).
“There are a number of key technologies that we are targeting. One of them, of course, is the metaverse. We are actively researching this area, even in case the concept evolves further,” said Jimmy Ng.
DBS leadership also hinted at non-fungible tokens (NFTs), representing digital assets, that could play a role in the metaverse’s potential mining scheme. NFTs are being traded between online players and between different virtual universe platforms. Ng believes that “this is one of the areas we can really consider.”
While not detailing when and what specific services the company might offer, the DBS leader said that “the way we use banking can be integrated into different platforms, in which there is a metaverse”.
“Over time, technologies like blockchain, augmented reality, and virtual reality will converge and provide many interesting use cases that we never thought of,” and these technologies will as a “game changer” in the banking industry in the next few years.
Metaverse attracted attention from other major banks. JP Morgan recently left the door open to provide financial services to the virtual universe.
“The success of building and scaling the metaverse depends on having a resilient, robust financial ecosystem that allows users to seamlessly connect the real and virtual worlds,” said the analyst. this bank in a metaverse study. “Our approach to payments and financial infrastructure will allow that interoperability to flourish.”
DBS started digital transformation nearly 10 years ago, with 60% of current customers using digital banking services. DBS employs about 10,000 technology engineers, mostly in India and Singapore, accounting for 30% of the company’s total employees. Jimmy Ng said the bank’s technology team grows at a rate of about 1,000 employees a year. “Over time, technology will pervade every aspect of financial services.”
According to Nikkei