Punjab National Bank Launches its Virtual Branch in the Metaverse: Details

State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Thursday announced the launch of a virtual branch, PNB Metaverse.

It is a virtual branch of the bank, which will deliver a unique experience of banking to existing and new customers, who can now explore the bank's products and services such as bank deposits, retail/MSME loans, digital products, women/senior citizens, 'Do It Yourself' and government flagship schemes, PNB said in a statement.

PNB has developed the Bank's Metaverse Branch, where its customers will get exclusive access to its virtual environment from the comfort of their home or office through their mobile phones and laptops, it said. 

In addition, the bank will offer an immersive 3D experience to the customers while performing traditional banking activities through their digital avatars, it said.

In this new phase of the internet, which evolves from a disparate collection of sites and apps into a persistent 3D environment, where moving from work to a social platform is as simple as walking from the office to the movie theatre across the street, PNB managing director Atul Kumar Goel said.

"With this technology, we are looking forward to increasing the customer engagement rate, improving the customer acquisition process, and providing hyper-personalized customer experience,” he added.

Indians could have increased awareness about the metaverse, according to a recent report by YouGov, which claimed that out of over a thousand surveyed participants from India, 53 percent were familiar with the metaverse.

A report from Nasscom, earlier this year, also said that metaverse technology was seeing a strong early pickup, although at-scale adoption was likely to be 8-10 years away.