PayPal is in no hurry to dive into blockchain and cryptocurrency

The company believes that it is the future, only the distant one.
The comments come amid strong cryptocurrency market recovery.

Tanya Abrosimova Independent Analyst

PayPal is not obsessed by bitcoin as yet, according to John Rainey, PayPal Chief Financial Officer. Speaking at Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade, he explained that the company wants to be part of the transformative process brought by blockchain and cryptocurrency, but the digitalization is still a distant future.

“We have teams clearly working on blockchain and cryptocurrency as well, and we want to take part in that in whatever form that takes in the future — I just think it’s a little early on right now [on bitcoin],” he said.

For the time being, PayPal prefers to focus on other growth and profit opportunities leaving nascent payment system for better times.

Namely, the company invested $500 million in Uber ahead the long-awaited IPO scheduled this week. According to Rainey, the two companies want to work together on creating a payment platform. Also, PayPal became Facebook’s Instagram payments provider.

Meanwhile, Rainey’s comments come amid a strong rally across the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin and all major altcoins demonstrated strong gains since the beginning of the week as the crypto bulls seem to have awakened from a long sleep. A flow of positive fundamental news triggered the recovery and pushed the prices above key technical levels.

Bitcoin (BTC) is changing hands at $5,890 at the time of writing.

Author

Tanya Abrosimova

Independent Analyst

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