Shoppers in India can now order sneakers in the Metaverse for a week

October 19, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart partnered with Polygon-incubated organization eDAO to launch a virtual shopping world in the Metaverse.

Consumers in India are getting more options for a digital shopping experience as major local e-commerce platforms increasingly experiment with blockchain and the Metaverse.

Indian shoppers can try out products from brands like Puma and Nivea in the gamified and interactive metaverse. That is thanks to local e-commerce giant Flipkart launching a metaverse space for consumers to discover products in a photorealistic virtual destination and shop.

Flipkart officially announced the launch of Flipverse on Oct. 17, aiming to bridge the best of the online and offline shopping experience.

Developed in collaboration with Polygon-incubated organization eDAO, Flipverse allows shoppers to create a metaverse avatar to go shopping in a virtual world, intending to bring customers closer to their favorite brands. At the same time, brands will be able to generate and create their metaverse-ready digital twin in the virtual world.

Besides featuring contests and exclusive brand offers, Flipverse will support unique digital collectibles. According to the announcement, Flipverse will feature a wide number of brands, including Puma, Noise, Nivea, Lavie, Tokyo Talkies, Campus and others. The new shopping experience will be available on Flipkart’s newly online shopping platform, FireDrops.

The Flipverse offering is reportedly in the pilot stage and aims to attract interest during this month’s festive season.

According to Naren Ravula, vice president of product strategy of Flipkart Labs, the Metaverse is one of the “significant revolutions” in the development of e-commerce, and it has immense potential. “By providing customers with access to their preferred brands, offers, SuperCoins, and digital collectibles, we are aiming to improve their shopping experiences in a virtual and immersive setting,” Ravula noted.

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal pointed out that the world has only “just begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible in the metaverse,” and e-commerce is one of the “killer use cases” of the Metaverse.

As one of the largest e-commerce platforms in India, Flipkart is known for making some loud cryptic statements on social media. Last year, Flipkart took to Twitter to say that the company would be accepting Bitcoin (BTC) payments, which eventually turned out to be an April Fools’ Day prank.

Flipkart is not the only company in India to experiment with the Metaverse. Indian multinational technology firm Tech Mahindra announced the launch of TechMVerse in February 2022, planning to offer interactive and immersive experiences to customers. As of July 2022, the firm was reportedly working on as many as 60 metaverse projects.

Shopify partners with Novel to deliver accessible Web3 for merchants

October 18, 2022 Coin Telegraph

App Store

Novel can deploy smart contracts over the NFT collections and make them available to users for purchases on the Shopify storefront.

Major global e-commerce platform Shopify announced a partnership with Novel, a no-code Web3 commerce platform, to make Web3 technologies accessible and approachable for all merchants.

As part of the partnership, Novel launched an app on the Shopify App Store, which equips existing merchants on Shopify with tools to experience Web3 innovation in ecommerce without any technical knowledge or time and monetary commitments.

The Novel Shopify app delivers two primary features: minting and distribution, and utility. The minting and distribution feature allows users to generate art for a new nonfungible token (NFT) collection or upload an existing NFT collection. Novel can then deploy smart contracts over the collection and make them available to users for purchase on the Shopify storefront.

Once an NFT is purchased, Novel will automate the currency bridge and create a corresponding crypto wallet for the customers. On the utility side, Novel allows merchants, including brands and creators, to enable token-based utility on their Shopify storefronts, including token-gated products, URLs and discounts, cross-chain gating on Solana (SOL), Ethereum and Polygon (MATIC), ERC-20 gating and more.

Sharing the details, Roger Beaman, CEO and co-founder of Novel stated:

“By integrating with Shopify, we’re able to leverage the industry-leading ecommerce platform they have built to equip all Shopify merchants with the tools they need to enter the Web3 commerce space.”

As an all-in-one Web3 tool on Shopify, the Novel app also powers token-gating for retailers to add use cases to their NFT collections.

Cointelegraph released a new feature allowing users to convert articles into NFTs. With this feature release, Cointelegraph created the first decentralized catalog of news wherein users can convert published articles into mintable NFTs via the Cointelegraph Historical collection.

Similar to collecting old newspapers for saving sentimental headlines, Cointelegraph allows readers to own and relive milestones in crypto, including Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade and El Salvador adopting BTC as legal tender.

South Korea embraces the proto-Metaverse

November 18, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

South Koreas will be immersed in the Metaverse sooner than later, as industries and public services begin rolling out virtual avatars and applications across the country.

The South Korean people and an increasing number of major companies in the country have begun to embrace and integrate the Metaverse into their everyday lives in new and unexpected ways.

Two major retailers in the country have recently introduced Metaverse and AI elements to shoppers to enhance their shopping experience.

GS Shop introduced home shopping via the Metaverse on Nov. 16 by showing the inner workings of a food production facility. It aimed to reassure customers of the quality of the facility and the food that was for sale.

GS Shop turned scans of the physical facility into 3D representations. This way, customers who had augmented reality (AR) devices, similar to the haptic gloves Meta previewed this week, could tour the facility in the virtual world to see the conditions under which their food was being produced.

Jason Ye, the co-founder of multi-chain ecosystem accelerator DeSpread, has noticed the explosion of companies joining the Metaverse in Korea. “It seems like every company is diving into the Metaverse and Play to Earn these days,” he told Cointelegraph.

“Korea has lots of huge IPs. If you can combine those IPs with great content around them, you can build a great business model. Attractive contents are the basis for entering the Metaverse.”

Metaverse and AI (artificial intelligence) avatars are popping up in several industries including retail shopping, finance, and even public services.

Lotte Home Shopping, which topped $14 billion in sales in 2020, introduced Lucy, a virtual model to help promote the brand’s products. Lotte will use Lucy in future video content and on social media since the avatar has its own Instagram account. It is also highly likely that Lotte will integrate Lucy into its Metaverse-based virtual store.

The deployment of virtual reality has also extended to the public sector. The Seoul City government announced on Nov. 6 that it planned on building its Metaverse platform by 2023, where residents can file civil petitions.

The tentatively named ‘Metaverse 120 Center’ will handle virtual visits that do not require the visitor’s physical presence.

On Nov. 10, the Korean military announced that it would phase in Metaverse applications to soldier training programs by the 2030s.

Chinese retail giant JD accepts digital yuan payments for Singles Day

November 11, 2021 Coin Telegraph

CBDC

Some 450,000 JD.com customers have used China’s digital yuan for payments as of June 2021.

E-commerce giant JD.com took payments in China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) at a massive local shopping event.

JD.com accepted digital yuan (e-CNY) for payment on its e-commerce application for the Singles Day promotion period which began on Oct. 31 and ended on Nov. 11, the firm confirmed on Thursday.

Singles Day is an unofficial shopping holiday in the country that also celebrates people who aren't in a romantic relationship.

“100,000 people had used e-CNY on JD.com’s app during the Singles Day promotion period as of today,” a spokesperson for JD.com told Cointelegraph.

“We will continue to work with related parties to explore the application,” the spokesperson added. The representative declined to specify the value of e-CNY processed during the promotion.

The representative noted that JD.com became the first Chinese e-commerce company to accept e-CNY in December 2020. As many as 450,000 customers used e-CNY for payment on the JD.com app from Dec. 11 last year to June 18, 2021, with total sales in e-CNY netting over 100 million yuan ($15.6 million), the spokesperson stated.

Founded in 1998, JD.com is a major e-commerce company in China, positioning itself as China’s largest online retailer, in addition to being China’s “biggest internet company by revenue.” The company has been actively adopting China’s CBDC, debuting the digital yuan for salary payments in April 2021.

After rolling out the first CBDC tests in 2020, the People’s Bank of China has been actively promoting the use of its digital currency in the country. As of October 2021, over 140 million people have registered digital yuan accounts, with nearly $10 billion spent in e-CNY despite the CBDC not being launched officially so far.

Fake news: Litecoin price surges 35% following Walmart adoption hoax

September 13, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Business

According to CNBC, a Walmart spokesperson confirmed a press release on Litecoin was “not authentic” roughly an hour after the initial report broke.

The price of Litecoin rose to more than $227 this morning following erroneous reports from major news outlets that U.S. retailer Walmart would be introducing a payment option for the cryptocurrency on all its eCommerce websites.

CNBC, Reuters, Decrypt and others reported on Monday that Walmart planned to have a “Pay with Litecoin Option” for its retail websites starting on Oct. 1 as part of a partnership with the Litecoin Foundation, the organization financing and promoting adoption of the Litecoin (LTC) ecosystem. The reports seemed to spawn from a single press release through distribution service GlobeNewsWire. The release claimed Walmart chose to adopt LTC for payments based on its “cheaper and faster” features and the token having “no central authority.”

However, according to CNBC, a Walmart spokesperson confirmed the press release was “not authentic” roughly an hour after the initial report broke. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro shows the LTC price surged more than 35% immediately following promulgation of the fake report — from $175 to a monthly high of more than $237 — before sharply falling. At time of publication, the price of Litecoin is $182.

With a market capitalization of more than $406 billion, Walmart has previously hinted it would be looking into cryptocurrencies. In August, the company posted a job listing for an expert who could develop a digital currency strategy and product roadmap, but did not specifically mention it would be introducing a path for crypto payments. In addition, Walmart has used blockchain technology starting as early as 2016 for supply chain management, customer marketplaces and smart appliances.

Cointelegraph reached out to Walmart and the Litecoin Foundation, but did not receive a response by time of publication. This story may be updated.

Dash launches retail consumer app for shopping in stores across America

July 27, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The app allows consumers to pay with Dash at over 155,000 in-store locations and 125 online retailers across the United States.

Dash has announced the launch of DashDirect — a consumer app that allows users to spend the DASH cryptocurrency in stores across America.

In an announcement released on Tuesday, Dash revealed that the new customer-focused app will offer up to 12% in savings on purchases by users.

Detailing the rebates and discount features, Mashall Greenwald, DashDirect Founder and CEO of CrayPay told Cointelegraph: “After you enter the exact amount of your current purchase in the app, an immediate discount of up to 12% is applied,” adding:

“This allows anyone to spend Dash for everyday purchases as easily as using USD, but with the added protections of decentralized money and the added value of 5% average savings due to Dash's efficient, low-cost transactions and DashDirect's unique merchant network.”

According to the release, the app will allow users to pay with Dash at popular American retail outlets like Best Buy, Staples, Chipotle, Home Depot, among others. According to Greenwald, thought the initial DashDirect launch is restricted to the U.S. there is demand for the product in several other countries.

“We will need to expand our merchant network to include merchants in any given region along with adding localized currency conversion and language support,” Greenwald added to Cointelegraph

Greenwald also told Cointelegraph that DashDirect is non-custodial, meaning that users will retain control of their Dash tokens when using the app. According to the DashDirect chief, the platform leverages Dash’s payment technology to offer low-cost, instant payment capability required for crypto-based microtransactions.

The app will also reportedly include a tipping feature, and a dashboard for users to track spending and savings.

DashDirect is also a further indication of Dash’s move to position itself as a payment-focused crypto. Back in January, its DashPay smartphone wallet app moved into the testnet phase.

Over 3,000 ATMs in Beijing Offer Digital Yuan Withdrawals

June 18, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Shopping

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