Emirates NBD Launches Metaverse Startup Accelerator
Accelerator will enhance the customer experience for the new virtual economy in partnership with the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Fintech Hive Emirates NBD, a banking group in the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa and Turkey), has launched a global accelerator programme for metaverse startups. It will enhance the customer experience for the new virtual […]
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Accelerator will enhance the customer experience for the new virtual economy in partnership with the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Fintech Hive
Emirates NBD, a banking group in the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa and Turkey), has launched a global accelerator programme for metaverse startups. It will enhance the customer experience for the new virtual economy in partnership with the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Fintech Hive, financial technology hub in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region powered by technology provider Microsoft.
The accelerator programme positions the bank as a leader in the next phase of banking innovation in alignment with the Dubai Metaverse Strategy aimed at placing Dubai in the top ten metaverse economies of the world. This strategy will support more than 40,000 virtual jobs by 2030 and add USD4 billion to Dubai’s economy in five years.
With 94 per cent of all financial transactions and requests conducted outside the branches, the bank is exploring new technologies in the web 3.0 world to expand its digital footprint and create immersive experiences for our customers.
Emirates NBD is scouting for leading FinTech’s, digital experience startups and emerging technology players operating across the metaverse landscape to enhance its immersion in the virtual world across three key areas: building the technology stack to facilitate the shift to 3D, creating virtual worlds to augment the customer experience in the metaverse and enabling a decentralised payment infrastructure for customers to develop, monetise, buy and sell digital assets and services.
Over a ten-week acceleration programme, the DIFC Fintech Hive will evaluate and match Emirates NBD with leading startups offering unique propositions on the value creation, experience and technology stack required for the metaverse. It will culminate in a demo day at GITEX, where the shortlisted participants will pitch their solutions for an opportunity to co-create engaging experiences for our customers in the new reality.
Marwan Hadi, Executive Vice President and Head of Retail Banking at Emirates NBD said, “Attracting innovative start-ups is crucial to Dubai’s ambition to be an international leader in the metaverse. As a leader in the region’s banking sector, Emirates NBD has always been a front-runner of digital innovation, looking to experiment and partner with tech start-ups who can help us accelerate our transformation journey and develop solutions that optimise the customer experience. With our entry into the metaverse, we seek to reimagine financial services using extended reality and create compelling new propositions for our customers in the new metaverse economy.”
Raja Al Mazrouei, Executive Vice President of DIFC FinTech Hive, said: “We are pleased to collaborate with Emirates NBD to launch the global accelerator programme for metaverse start-ups, which are growing rapidly and witnessing increasing interest from around the world. This step reaffirms our commitment to supporting Dubai’s ambition to be among the top ten metaverse economies in the world. At DIFC FinTech Hive, we continue to adopt the latest technologies to keep pace with the rising momentum in the global digital space.”
“In the metaverse, where physical and digital worlds come together to create an entirely new platform layer, we have an exciting opportunity to create transformative solutions that completely revolutionise the journeys and experiences of consumers”, said Naim Yazbeck, General Manager at Microsoft UAE
