Flickplay raises $5 million for AR collectibles for retailers

Partnering with fashion retailer JapanLA and city organizations like Downtown Santa Monica Inc. across the U.S., the Flickpay app is aiming to bring a digital collectible metaverse to the real world through AR. Partners in Europe are coming next year.
While purely digital experiences have been touted as the future, the possibilities around AR that overlays the current physical landscape could prove to be more interesting and interactive, especially for users that are not familiar with virtual reality.

John Hanke, founder and CEO of Niantic, the company behind the biggest AR game Pokemon Go, recently said that the metaverse should encourage people to interact in real life through AR, creating new connections and expanding on thousands of years of human experience. As Meta grows in force and expands its metaverse, could AR experiences allow for a more natural way of engaging with technology?
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Pierina Merino, founder of the AR collectibles platform Flickplay, would certainly say so. The Flickplay app works on the premise of online personas, flanked by collectibles that can be unlocked, shown off and sold, akin to an NFT. The platform’s interactive game map allows users to interact in real-time with digital objects owned by other people in the real world. Flickplay announced its partnership with fashion retailer JapanLA earlier this month after raising $5 million in seed funding, backed by global VC firm Lightspeed Ventures and co-led by San Francisco-based Abstract VC. 

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