The race to invest in the blossoming market of cryptocurrencies is on the rise. However, PayPal is the latest company to announce that will not invest in the domain of cryptocurrencies. The announcement was made by PayPal CFO, John Rainey.
Eluding Crypto Investments
PayPal announced that it is not likely to buy digital currencies like bitcoin, though the company does see immense opportunity in the digital wallet space. John Rainey, the Chief Financial Officer of the payments giant stated that the brand had no upcoming plans to invest in crypto, although they were looking forward to invest in additive services to the existing platform. Rainey asserted, “We’re not going to invest corporate cash, probably, in sort of financial assets like that, but we want to capitalize on this growth opportunity that’s in front of us.”
However, the company has acknowledged that it believes the transition to digital forms of currencies is inevitable. In December, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman called digital wallets a “natural complement to digital currencies” and said the company serves 360 million digital wallets. PayPal also has exposure to the crypto market as back in October the company announced that it would allow the users to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies. Moreover, users can also shop with the digital coins in PayPal’s retail network.
Plans for the Future
Furthermore, Venmo- the mobile wallet owned by PayPal- is also expected to begin offering the same list of services to customers all over the world. Rainey also explained that, “The types of services that we’re providing, like buy now, pay later [and] crypto as an example — even offline QR code — those are the types of things that we want to continue to invest in, be it organically or even inorganically when we see opportunities in the ecosystem.” Last month, PayPal made its first acquisition since announcing in late 2019 that it would buy coupon aggregator Honey Science for $4 billion. PayPal took 100% control of the GoPay payment platform, which is based in China, in a deal that closed on Jan. 11.