Amazon seeks digital currency lead, but denies BTC payment plans

After sitting back while its peers like Facebook and Microsoft were exploring digital currencies, Amazon is now dipping its toes in the water. The e-commerce giant is looking for a digital currency and blockchain lead to leverage these technologies to better its payments system. This led to reports that it was considering digital currency payments, although the company has denied the claims.

The job posting for the blockchain lead revealed that he “will leverage [his] domain expertise in Blockchain, Distributed Ledger, Central Bank Digital Currencies and Cryptocurrency” to drive product strategy and development.

In a follow-up statement to media, Amazon stated, “We’re inspired by the innovation happening in the cryptocurrency space and are exploring what this could look like on Amazon. We believe the future will be built on new technologies that enable modern, fast, and inexpensive payments, and hope to bring that future to Amazon customers as soon as possible.”

This led to speculation that the e-commerce giant was planning to integrate digital currency payments. According to a City AM report, quoting anonymous source in the company, Amazon was allegedly set to start accepting BTC payments by the end of the year.

The source reportedly told City AM, “This isn’t just going through the motions to set up cryptocurrency payment solutions at some point in the future – this is a full-on, well-discussed, integral part of the future mechanism of how Amazon will work.”

To further stamp down on just how important this project was to Amazon, the source said “the directive is coming from the very top… Jeff Bezos himself.”

Amazon wouldn’t stop there, according to the report. It would also lay the groundwork for payments in most of the top 10 digital currencies by market cap. And in an even bigger move, it would start working on its own native token by 2022.

“When all these crypto ducks are lined up, there’s another twist to push things even further into Amazon’s favour—a native token… This then becomes a multi-level infrastructure where you can pay for goods and services or earn tokens in a loyalty scheme,” the report noted.

However, Amazon has dismissed these rumors. In a statement on Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for the company set the record straight by stating, “Notwithstanding our interest in the space, the speculation that has ensued around our specific plans for cryptocurrencies is not true. We remain focused on exploring what this could look like for customers shopping on Amazon.”

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