This is the english translation of an article posted by Forbes China, following an interview that they conducted with CEO Eric Gu. Please find the original article of Kenny Au for Forbes China here: link

Traditional currency has already been adapted to the digital space, i.e it has already been digitized. You can collect currency in your WeChat account and see your balance in a mobile app. You can trade this money, spend this money and send this money to others freely, with an infrastructure to support all of this.

But things get a little more difficult when it comes to digital goods, assets, and services. When you’re selling something digitally (e.g you are selling digitally held deeds for land or property or are selling a handbag to someone through an e-commerce channel), there is no comprehensive infrastructure or a system that works for all digital-based trade.

There is a huge amount of trust involved with this; you must trust that the seller will not break their promise to deliver the goods or services that you have paid for and that they will not just take off with your money.

You must also trust that you’re paying for the genuine article and that the bulk order of boots you’ve just paid for are the boots you wanted, verified by the original designer or manufacturer of the footwear.

The global ecommerce market is already worth $22 trillion, according to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. China alone is worth a massive $1.132 trillion of this, overtaking the e-commerce figures of the United States and the United Kingdom. As this figure grows and an increasing number of customers and service providers aim to make digital transactions, handing over access to assets digitally, so too will the questions of trust, verification and security gain in importance.

Establishing a Digital Identity

Under the current centralized system of trading, trading with another party and verifying both of your identities can be a substantial challenge.

Not only both parties need to be registered with a verified third-party (e.g a trade body or another authorized department) but gaining this information from the appropriate party can take time. When you’re just trying to make a sale, you don’t want to spend time scanning your passport just to prove that you are who you say you are. In this age of digital, that is unwieldy.

A digital identity would make a lot more sense and this is exactly what asset digitization and identity group of Metaverse is aiming to establish. Under Metaverse’s roadmap, users would be able to permanently establish and build their own digital identity, registering freely on an open-source, public blockchain where everyone is who they say they are and you can verify this on the blockchain.

On the seller side, service providers have their own digital identities too and act as “intermediaries in the blockchain” to provide “rapid and transparent supervision.” Providers will be able to establish a smart contract along with their digital asset just by filling out a form. When the asset trades hands, so too will the verification, ensuring that nobody gets scammed and buyers can be confident that the asset or service they’re paying for is the real deal.

Ecommerce Fraud Reaches an All-Time High

Ecommerce fraud is growing at an alarming rate according to a recently published report. The October 2017 Global Fraud Index report which saw PYMNTS and Signifyd track and report fraud at over 5,000 ecommerce merchants across North America, Asia, and Europe found that ecommerce fraud is now worth $57.8 billion overall. The report also found that there was 5.5% increase in total fraud between Q2 2016 and Q2 2017.

eMarketer also estimates that the ecommerce industry grew by 23.2% in 2017 alone. As the industry grows, so too will the opportunity for fraud and for shoppers to be ripped off by sellers.

This is especially the case given that many online purchases come through social media and mobile devices (75% of Chinese ecommerce is expected to have come through mobile devices in 2017) where casual users may be less cautious about how they are spending their money.

How will these shoppers be able to shop confidently, having huge concerns that they may be a victim of fraud? And that the second that they transfer funds, the seller will abscond, taking their hard-earned cash with them? Even if one seller is legitimate, of course there is no guarantee that every other seller you’re shopping from is legitimate too.

Metaverse took eight months to build and according to its roadmap, it plans to expand significantly during 2018. The first phase of the digital identity and digital asset registration is being rolled out in early 2018 with BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) developments (including integrating cloud service and architecture) to expand throughout the year with the aim to build a secure future for the world of online trading and selling.