As digital assets and decentralized finance rapidly evolve, the integration of the financial system and virtual worlds (increasingly referred to as the metaverse), is expected to gain impetus. The metaverse promise to be a critical use-case for decentralized finance – a financial field that has struggled to find convincing use-cases. Digital finance, in return, offers a means of financing, developing, and incentivising metaverse citizens – at a time when virtual worlds have struggled to convince the public of the compelling case for their existence. This DCU research collaboration reviews existing research exploring metaverse applications in finance such as virtual financial services, instruments, intermediaries, and markets. We then build on this to present a conceptual design for integrating the metaverse with the financial system. In doing so, we identify emerging research areas, and provide insights to inform future academic and financial pursuits.