PayPal CFO Says Firm Not Interested in Crypto Sector Right Now

The chief financial officer (CFO) of major payment system PayPal said that the firm is hesitant about getting involved in the cryptocurrency sector in an interview with Yahoo Finance on May 7.

Speaking about the company’s future cryptocurrency plans, PayPal CFO John Rainey pointed out that the firm previously allowed its merchants to accept bitcoin (BTC) as a form of payment, but subsequently saw the instability and volatility of the currency. “If a merchant accepted that they would quickly convert it to a more stable currency like the euro or dollar,” Rainey stated, adding:

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

Rainey also revealed that PayPal made a $500 million worth investment in transportation network company Uber, because the two companies intend to jointly develop a payments platform.

In mid-April, PayPal won a cybersecurity patent for a system entitled “Techniques for cryptocurrency ransomware detection and mitigation,” that intends to improve the detection of ransomware and prevent it from locking up users’ access to their files.

Last year, PayPal filed another patent to increase the speed of cryptocurrency payments by using secondary private keys to reduce wait times for transactions between merchants and consumers. The patent details how the creation of secondary wallets with their own private keys will make transaction times much faster, “practically eliminat[ing] the amount of time the payee must wait to be sure they will receive a virtual currency payment in a virtual currency transaction.”