You can't make secure payments in the Metaverse
By @edent
· metaverse oculus vr · 4 comments · 300 words · read ~358 times.
Another in an occasional series bemoaning the shitty user experience of Zuck's Metaverse.
I have an Oculus Quest 2 and wanted to pay money for an in-app purchase. This seems like a normal thing to do.
There's no way to add a credit card while your head is strapped to an overheating Android device. So I emerged into meatspace opened the Oculus app on my phone and typed in my credit card details.
I went through the usual dance of getting a 2FA code from my card provider and was successfully authorised. Nice!
I jacked back in to the Metaverse and clicked the "BUY NOW" button.
This was the message that greeted me:
What - and I say this with all due respect to Facebook's Meta's employees - the actual fuck is this half-baked bullshit?
Why would you let a user add a credit card if you know that you can't accept card payments? Why not warn the user? Why not do five minutes of user testing? Why?!
Anyway, I took off the helmet, found my phone, and added PayPal. The transaction then went through... On to the same card that was just refused!
Look, I don't claim to know the intricacies of all the payment systems in the world. But this just shows an aggressively hostile attitude to usability.
Why would you make it so hard for your potential customers to give you money? Don't you like money?
We all know the Metaverse is a joke. It's just a way for companies to hype up whatever they're already doing. But do they have to make their contempt for users so obvious?
as someone who works in payments: lol
@Edent the "because it requires strong customer authentication" aspect particularly screams professionalism and security
While Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, made many mistakes over the years, one thing they managed to nail down was buying virtual stuff in-world. This helps explain why they're still around and still making a profit.
Meta's biggest problem, I feel, is that they started by buying up Oculus. Those headsets are now literal boat anchors on their metaverse project because, as you discovered, financial stuff, in particular, won't work when your device is strapped to your face.
lmao. the Metaverse sounds terrible tbh. glad you're reporting back so i don't have to look
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