The mother company of the social media network Facebook, Meta Platforms Inc, was responsible for the $60 million plan to acquire the trademark assets of U.S. regional bank Meta Financial Group, according to the representatives of the companies.  

The agreement demonstrates how significant the Meta moniker has become for the IT behemoth. Meta is banking that its focus on the metaverse – shared digital spaces accessed over the internet via a variety of devices – will pay off handsomely in the coming years.

In a regulatory filing on Monday, Meta Financial said that a Delaware company called Beige Key LLC had agreed to buy the worldwide rights to its company names for $60 million in cash. The identity of Beige Key’s owner was not revealed.

“Beige Key is affiliated with us and we have acquired these trademark assets,” a Meta Platforms spokesperson said. The involvement of Meta Platforms was confirmed by a spokesperson of MetaBank.

Meta Financial partners with institutions such as government agencies and financial technology firms to offer banking services with the goal of bolstering financial inclusion> it also offers products through its MetaBank subsidiary such as consumer savings, loans and credit cards, and commercial lending.

In October, Facebook announced that its parent company had changed its name to Meta Platforms.

The metaverse, according to the tech giant, is the successor of the mobile internet. It has invested extensively in virtual reality and augmented reality. Meta Platforms’ formerly invite-only Horizon Worlds app, where users of its Quest virtual reality headsets may play games and communicate as avatars, was made available to over-18 users in the United States and Canada last week.

The concept of the metaverse, which has been mentioned on multiple Silicon Valley earnings calls and achieving it will necessitate collaboration among industry titans, might take more than a decade to be fully achieved.

Before Facebook’s name change, a spokeswoman for Meta Platforms had stated the business had been in talks with Meta Financial.

Meta Financial stated in the filing that it had begun a brand strategy assessment early this year. However, a MetaBank spokeswoman declined to comment on the discussions outside of the document’s contents.

In mid-afternoon trading, Meta Financial’s shares were trading 1.5 per cent lower, giving it a market value of roughly $1.74 billion. Meta Platforms was up 1.6 per cent to $933 billion in value.

(Adapted from Reuters.com)