Dan Schulman spoke about the company and its intention to add bitcoin to its reserves soon. The CEO said that the digital payments company is also setting some experiments with Ethereum.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman revealed the company’s vision regarding bitcoin and Ethereum. He also gave details on the creation of a business unit with a particular focus on cryptocurrencies. The CEO announced the news in February.
Schulman also noted: “There are a lot of opportunities for us to help create that next generation of infrastructure. That’s what this business unit is all about.”
Schulman said: “part of the mission is to promote the use of digital currencies.” The new unit will include transfers by the company’s core technology team and is receiving guide by an advisory council that includes experts in technology, cryptocurrencies, and regulation. PayPal has also turned to Wences Casares, the founder of the Xapo firm, for advice.
PayPal Seeks to “Buy, Sell and Safeguard” Bitcoin and more
Schulman himself knows a lot about the crypto world. In the interview, the CEO spoke about how PayPal’s encryption unit works with smart contracts. Also, Schulman revealed that they are testing Ethereum and other blockchains to add them into the company’s payment services.
Schulman notes that PayPal’s crypto efforts will soon expand beyond “buy, sell, and hold.” The CEO expressed an evident frustration at how the financial system’s digitization has failed to reduce consumers’ costs. He noted about this topic that the average “absorption rate” for transactions has stubbornly remained at 2.8%.
According to the CEO of PayPal, governments and central banks are running an analysis of how blockchain and other new technologies could set cost reductions.
Tesla and other Companies that Added Bitcoin to their Corporate Treasuries
According to its CEO’s statements, Paypal is not currently planning to join companies such as Square, Tesla, and other companies that integrated bitcoin into their corporate treasuries.
“It’s not necessarily at the top of our radar,” Schulman said. “We don’t necessarily like the ups and downs of what can happen if you invest in a certain asset class,” he added.
About the “super application” that PayPal would be developing, some versions are circling on the web, arguing that this app would work mainly as a digital wallet. An excellent example of this digital wallet is the Chinese application WeChat, which serves as a payment wallet and a social network and market platform.
Schulman did not unleash more details about this topic. The media commented that North Americans, unlike the Asian public, “continue to prefer plastic cards or use cash to buy.” For this reason, according to them, it would not be easy to convince people to adopt an application similar to WeChat.
PayPal’s commercial strategy has been changing, changing, and evolving concerning bitcoin and cryptocurrencies since these currencies saw its integration into their leading platform.
By: Jenson Nuñez
