7 ways VR and augmented reality transform payments

TD Ameritrade's new virtual reality experience, an immersive video viewable through Facebook's Oculus Go headset, feels more like stepping onto a Disney ride than going into a virtual world. And that's probably the ideal approach for the current state of VR adoption.

The Oculus Go is a $200 standalone headset that's better suited for media consumption than for truly immersive experiences, and its apps provide a simple taste of what the technology can do. TD Ameritrade didn't try to push the limits of the technology — which relies on smartphone components under the hood — beyond what it was designed to do.

The closest comparison is Disney's Soarin, a popular theme park ride that uses a massive video screen to simulate the experience of hang gliding through the skies of California. Though TD's experience starts at street level to explain the inner workings of Wall Street, it eventually takes a helicopter's view of Silicon Valley before landing the viewer inside a bitcoin mining operation. A narrator explains the surroundings, while facts appear in a style reminiscent of VH1's "Pop Up Video."

Fidelity Investments has demonstrated a VR "agent" named Cora that can answer questions about stocks, but this is still a prototype.

Built using Amazon Web Services' VR application Sumerian, Cora can answer questions on stock performance, pull up company charts, and answer questions on how a company is doing. A client can verbally ask Cora questions in a VR chat room. Cora is a prototype, and the VR/AR employee training programs are in the pilot stage.

Other use cases for VR involve gauging a client’s appetite for risk by simulating market downturns and offering visuals on how that may play out in their lives.

In addition, VR can be used to train new advisors by simulating client meetings and different, challenging scenarios.

The Royal Bank of Canada is integrating augmented reality — a technology that overlays a digital interface over the real world — into peer-to-peer payments and digital gifting. RBC eGift, which is currently available in the App Store, lets users send money via Interac and virtual gift cards. Though RBC also uses AR in its banking app to help customers find ATMs, the eGift app is meant to be available as a separate experience.

“The reason that we do it in an app is that we want to make sure that we provide the best experience as possible for the consumer,” said Eddy Ortiz, RBC's vice president of innovation and solution acceleration. “Imagine if I had a great experience sending it, but when you receive it you’re not able to visualize it in the same way or it doesn’t work. We have to take care it end to end.”

As VR and AR technologies have evolved, they have become increasingly social. Oculus, one of the companies at the forefront of consumer VR, is a unit of Facebook, and has integrated the social network with many of its VR apps. For example, consumers watching a concert or comedy show in VR on the Oculus Venues app can link their Facebook account and find out which of their virtual seatmates share the same interests.

In RBC's case, the AR gifting technology is meant to be used face-to-face, adding a personal experience to the somewhat impersonal practice of sending a digital gift card.

"It basically allows you to be immersed and put a lot of thought behind what you’re doing,” Ortiz said. “I can think about it as: 'Hey Siri send my wife $100 for our anniversary' or something, she’s going to be upset.”