SUNSET BEACH --Wirecard is no longer just the name of a large German online bank, but now is a SL island too. The project was launched by Noren Rang of Phase 4 Communication, a Munich-based agency that has already worked in-world for BMW. The island is focused on water and white, with small light blue bridges and paths. The site was completed in about two weeks by two builders of the same agency. “We wanted to add a special style to a very functional and comfortable place,” said Rang.

Jan Marsalek, Vice President Technology of Wirecard AG, declined to disclose information about the cost of the project. “We gave the designer a set of requirements, such as that conference rooms shall be included for meetings with clients and that we wanted an open reception area inspired by Deutsche Bank’s Q110 project. But for us, costs arise primarily out of the continuous in-world staff presence, for which we rely on our existing customer service infrastructure,” he said.

Compared to the other European banks that already have a Second Life presence, such as the Dutch ABN Amro, the French BNP Parisbas, the Swiss BCV and more recently the Danish Saxo and the Norwegian DNB Nor, Wirecard's plans are wider.

There is 24x7 customer assistance, first of all, with two avatars always on hand on the island, speaking German and English. “Via these terminals you can get to our Web site to set up an account,” said one of them, Rebecka Beaumont. “The account needs to be funded by an external credit card or by wire transfer. Then you can make transactions with a virtual Mastercard on the Internet.” But, she admitted, this service is not very interesting for those who already have a real credit card.

Vice President Marsalek said the firm has future plans to allow customers to open accounts in second Life. “At the moment our focus is on providing personal customer service to our existing customer base. We do currently evaluate the possibility to enable the opening of accounts for our Internet payment service Wirecard inside the virtual branch and we do intend to extend our service offering inside SL, but so far we are focusing on customer service. As we do not operate physical branches we are looking for other ways to strengthen our customer relationship and to build a more personal and emotional bond with our customers. In contrast to traditional online media such as email or websites, SL offers a highly interactive, fun and emotional way to interact with customers, with a comprehensive brand experience and the possibility for us to shake our client’s hands, something highly personal, which we couldn’t do over the email or phone.”

The second novelty is that Wirecard will also have a presence in Entropia, the virtual universe by Mind Ark consisting of more than 580,000 members and with an annual trading volume of over $360 million USD. According to PC Magazine, at the beginning of May Wirecard paid about $60,000 USD to acquire one of the few exclusive banking licenses in Entropia. For Wirecard, therefore, to link technology and banking services in SL is a strategic objective, just the first step of a more complex strategy, as one of its press releases stated.

Still, not everybody believes that such a bank presence in SL could be useful.