London-based Worldpay, one of the world’s leading payment processing companies, on Thursday revealed a demonstration showing how people could make credit card payments in virtual reality.

Using credit cards may not be the most exciting thing that people might do in VR, to say the least. But being able to pay for things – and doing so in familiar ways – could be an important part of sales in virtual worlds.

For the purposes of entertainment and education, VR creates immersive experiences that attempt to closely mimic similar real-world activities. In the case of sales, companies have sought to use VR to provide realistic presentations of items such as furniture and fashion. In a virtual showroom, a potential buyer can move around the outside of a car, giving a sense of presence and scale in the presentation, or even look at and even “handle” decorative items for a home on a table.

With Worldpay’s solution, the point of sale experience can be added for shoppers. Additionally, the experience would use the company’s already extensive worldwide processing network and provide security and reliability for merchants.

The company’s demo, produced with the help of an HTC Vive headset and motion controllers, shows how a familiar credit card machine could be added to a virtual world. After selecting an item, the user would then select the credit card machine – in this case, a small keypad card reader style – pick an already stored credit card and then hover it over the device. Those are all motions many people are already used to from real-world retail transactions.

When it comes to entering a personal identification number, or PIN, things change dramatically. Current VR technology lacks the dexterity necessary to allow people to type on keypads with their fingers, so instead the system places glowing balls with numbers in them in the field of view, which the user then selects from to “type” the PIN.

Of course, the floating numbers are not visible to anyone except the headset wearer, but the number balls are randomly placed so that outside viewers cannot easily guess what numbers were chosen or even what order.

“We have built this prototype to provide a seamless, secure payment option for consumers in a virtual world,” Worldplay innovation director Nick Telford-Reed said about the proof of concept at Finextra. “While it is very early stages in its development, we believe that the sky is the limit when it comes to the industries which will find this technology useful.”

The demonstration takes place in what is described as a virtual video game world, but Worldpay has also shown interest in working with retail stores such as Ikea, which have shown interest in VR for sales. In 2016, the company started experimenting with VR concepts for furniture and household fittings.

Worldpay’s system is not the first payment system added to VR. In 2016, Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holdings demoed VR Pay, a method for paying for items by simply nodding.

A Walker survey of U.S. shoppers showed that 74 percent expected that VR might influence their purchase decisions, according to a Business Insider report.

Image: Worldpay