3pointD.com

German bank Wirecard Bank AG has opened »an island« in the virtual world of Second Life, according to a press release [<-- registration required]. The German financial services provider is also planning to set up shop in Entropia Universe, it says, which implies that it may be one of the five winners of the banking licenses that Entropia recently auctioned.

In Second Life, “specially trained Wirecard Bank service personnel are available to assist customers. Customer advisers are represented by avatars in the branches, answering questions on the products and services of the Wirecard Bank. In addition, access to Wirecard’s payment services is available via Second Life. Interactive entertainment campaigns serve to round off the offer of Wirecard Bank AG on an island of its own in Second Life.”

Plans for Entropia are less detailed. Wirecard “is also positioning itself in Entropia Universe by MindArk PE AB, a virtual world consisting of more than 580,000 members with an annual trading volume of over 360 million U.S. dollars. Not only is it possible to acquire virtual objects or properties within Entropia Universe; in the near future it will also be possible to visit a further virtual branch office of the Wirecard Bank online.”

The press release says nothing about whether these virtual bank branches will deal in virtual currency or just give you access to your real-world accounts — or even just direct you to a Web site where you could do that. Second Life is down for maintenance at the moment, so I can’t go check it out. I do think providing financial services in virtual currencies would be valuable, but I’m not sure if there’s enough of an audience to make it worthwhile as anything but a public relations move. Until there is, we’ll continue to see mostly smaller operators in the space. What would be really interesting would be to see a start-up company go to the trouble to get whatever limited financial services license that would allow it to offer L$, Therebucks or PED services, and help people integrate their virtual accounts with their real ones. The virtual world doesn’t necessarily need banks, but it does need stronger connections with non-virtual accounts. One hurdle to this: security; is any virtual world secure enough for you to give its software your online banking password?