Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook Pay has officially become Meta Pay, but his post focuses mainly on what the company hopes to build in the future — “a wallet for the metaverse.” While Meta Pay is essentially the same tool as before, just with Meta branding, Zuckerberg says the company is working on something that will allow users to manage their identities, items, and payment methods as they navigate the digital world that Meta will deploy. be future.

The company has hinted at these plans before — in its May announcement of its Meta Pay rebranding, it also said it was “figuring out what a single wallet experience could look like” in regards to making payments and storing your data. identity and digital assets. However, Zuckerberg’s post focuses primarily on how the company’s metaverse wallet enables proof of digital ownership; he mentions how it can be used to create and buy “digital clothing, art, videos, music, experiences, virtual events and more.”

The concept of a wallet proving you own digital items sounds a bit like lot such as crypto wallets containing NFTs. And while Zuckerberg’s post doesn’t mention blockchain at all, the company has recently been working on integrating NFTs into Instagram and Facebook. Still, the company hasn’t really said whether it plans to actually build its metaverse using crypto or if it will simply draw inspiration from it. (Given Meta’s history, the latter may be the best option; the attempt to create a true cryptocurrency didn’t end well, and it’s reportedly exploring a digital currency not based on the blockchain.)

Zuckerberg also says the plan is to make Meta’s wallet interoperable so you can take your goods to “any metaverse experience.” While Zuckerberg has admitted he’s not sure what interoperability between businesses will look like, Meta recently helped form a standards group with the goal of getting everyone on the same page when it comes to language and technology related to the metaverse.

The wallet Zuckerberg describes is probably a long way off, especially if it’s meant to be interoperable based on standards that don’t exist yet. That doesn’t stop the company from selling digital items in the meantime, though; it already has a store that sells clothes for your digital avatars.