Metaverse

Shape, immerse and grow your business in the metaverse

The metaverse is a manifestation of ultimate duality - a seamless convergence of the physical and virtual worlds to create a ‘phygital’ experience. Like the internet, the metaverse is not a product. Rather, it’s a conduit for a new ecosystem and a new frontier of existence where people, your customers and employees, can interact with one another.

Embarking on your journey into the metaverse sounds futuristic, but it’s all relative. In fact, the younger generations already spend hours in various metaverses everyday – think: gaming. And that is just the start, as soon the metaverse will be entrenched in our everyday lives.

The range of possibilities that Web3 can offer are yet to be uncovered but being a participant (if not an early leader) today, holds value that could lead to major competitive advantages tomorrow.

"The metaverse, and the advancements of Web3 technologies, present exciting opportunities that will transform the way organizations can transact, interact and engage with both customers and employees. The Metaverse is not just about gaming, it is the future of truly innovative and immersive experiences and opens up pathways for new services, products, channels, marketing and business models. Are you ready?"

— Katie Bolla, Metaverse Services Co-Leader, and Partner Customer Experience and Innovation

"The metaverse is a digital environment that combines virtual realities like VR, blockchains, and gaming, to allow users to interact virtually across many platforms. It's about fostering social connections and building a digital identity in a network of virtual worlds. We need to develop a complex ecosystem where people will have their own digital identities through the likes of digital wallets or transacting with cryptoassets. And the success of all this, and how we interact within the metaverse depends on the interoperability between different virtual worlds - where you can take your own avatar and you can go from one virtual world to another."

— Kareem Sadek, Metaverse Services Co-Leader, and Cryptoassets and Blockchain Services Co-Leader

How we can help

KPMG in Canada has dedicated teams with deep technology and innovation experience to provide you with both the strategic and technical support you may need to navigate the metaverse ecosystem, including metaverse design, use cases of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cryptoassets and community engagement, and broader Web3 integrations.

We can help you at every stage of your journey into the metaverse. From ideating on potential use cases and solutions, to designing your strategy and roadmap, to helping you transform an idea into a reality by implementing your plan while managing the right risks, vendors, and cryptoassets.

The metaverse is at the intersection of immersive experiences, customer engagement, meta-economies, and digital assets. A successful metaverse initiative requires careful consideration across each of these activation pillars and can be a differentiator for companies looking to take advantage of new ways to engage with their employees and customers. KPMG in Canada’s Metaverse Taskforce brings together the subject matter knowledge across the firm’s Innovation Lab, Customer Experience team, and Cryptoasset & Blockchain CoE to support our clients in their end-to-end metaverse journey. Combining our deep industry insights, cross functional experience, and technology & operational expertise, our team is here to support throughout the various stages of your metaverse activation journey.

It is critical for any organization to have a consistent foundational level of understanding about what the Metaverse is and what it is not, to determine whether the opportunity contributes to their organizational objectives or overall strategy. In addition, a minimum level of understanding of the associated risks is recommended before diving deep into the initiative. We have built a set of educational modules/workshops for the Metaverse that include NFTs, cryptoassets, web3, and immersive design thinking & ideation sessions to help educate our clients on the opportunities, key considerations and risks associated with Metaverse.

Our strategy and customer experience design services help our clients identify and prioritize the relevant use cases through our “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach through rapid prototyping. Our services focus on building a roadmap for the Metaverse that increases employee and consumer engagement with each activation. Our strategy services will help our clients with each brand activation and ecosystem buildout, whether it be through an NFT program execution, a buildout of a digital twin, or enabling cryptoassets and web3 capabilities, to highlight the various immersive metaverse experiences.

There are unique risks associated with any metaverse activation. Some of these risks are further heightened due to the lack of clear guidance from the regulators or professional bodies. While traditional operational and technology risks are still relevant in the Metaverse, the way that they are addressed could differ in the Metaverse and cryptoasset space. We will work with our clients to highlight these risks and help design mitigation strategies to address them while focusing on any compliance requirements, as required. Our governance and risk management services will help our clients address various risks and build the right governance structure around them. These risks include, but are not limited to: cryptoasset custody, AML, tokenomics, ecosystem governance, interoperability, privacy & security, as well as vendor and smart contract risks.

A successful implementation entails adequate translation of requirements from previous phases and integration across multiple innovative technologies that contribute to the company’s objectives. Our KPMG Metaverse team will support our clients in various ways during the implementation and operationalization stage of their metaverse journey. Our services include assisting our clients in vendor identification/selection/assessments, business and technical requirements design, systems integration, and program governance for the different metaverse activations.

An organization’s metaverse initiative is a journey with several activations along a defined roadmap that follows a “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach. The assets built or additional activation channels should keep employees and customers engaged in a secure manner while meeting all ongoing technical, regulatory compliance, ecosystem, reporting and operational requirements. KPMG’s Metaverse team will support our clients in identifying the additional policies and procedures, across functions, that would be key to ongoing success of the Metaverse activations. Our KPMG Tax and Audit professionals support our clients with relevant tax implications and accounting guidelines. In addition, our services will further support our clients with ongoing program buildup or assessments covering various areas such as privacy & security, AI governance, KYC, and AML monitoring.

"Metaverse is an additional channel for organizations, artists and any other business to engage and interact with their customers. Companies need to be able to engage where their customers are spending their time - metaverse is that next destination. We should not think of metaverse just as an immersive experience, but also as meta-economy that facilitates commercial transactions for B2B, B2C or C2C. The most critical aspect of ensuring companies do this right is to understand the risks and governance associated with this emerging technology and experience before going too deep into operationalization, and to manage these risks throughout the initiative."

— Kunal Bhasin, Director & Co-Lead, Cryptoassets & Blockchain CoE, Advisory Services

"People are often surprised to hear that governments have been experimenting with AR, VR and blockchain technology for years. Their participation - and partnership with the private sector - is critical in terms of delivering value to everyone, not just the fortunate few. Let's not forget that even the founders of today’s most popular decentralized blockchain platform, originally envisioned their product to be a launchpad for sociopolitical action and a way to break free from the grips of a handful of massive tech companies and financial institutions. We will only win if both sectors create the new digital frontier of Web3 and the metaverse together."

— Paula Kwan, Senior Manager, Customer Experience Design and Digital Strategy

"To thrive during the advent of a newly integrated digital experience, it is essential that enterprises have a trusted hand to help guide them through the vastly open worlds of new digital economies and virtual experiences. The next generation of deeply engaging and immersive markets are at the forefront of how the Ignition teams work through complex ideas and workshop on projects to help our clients reap the benefits of a new metaverse futures."

— Matt Everson, Director of Innovation, Ignition Studio, Growth & Strategy

"The metaverse introduces a new era in big data analytics. The integration of structured and unstructured data in 3D, and application of advanced spatial analytic techniques will enable new customer and market insights, opening digital economies like never seen before."

— Aranka Anema, Director, Science & Innovation