eBay CEO Says Support for Crypto Payments Coming Soon

E-commerce juggernaut eBay could be the next major firm to introduce support for crypto payments, CEO Jamie Lannone said in a recent interview.

eBay to Integrate Crypto Payments

The leading internet marketplace is mulling introducing support for crypto payments in a move that is being seen as one to attract Gen Z and Millennials to the platform.

In a recent interview, eBay CEO Lannone said the company has been looking into integrating crypto payment options for quite some time and an announcement regarding the same could be made public as early as March 10.

Lannone said:

“We’re just completing our transition to manage payments where we’re now managing $85 billion of volume on our platform directly. This gives us the ability to open up new forms of payment. We opened up Google Pay and Apple Pay. We have a partnership with Afterpay in Australia, which is a platform that appeals to Gen Z, and that is a buy now pay later platform on the marketplace.”

Adding:

“And so we continue to evaluate other forms of payments that we should take on the platform. We don’t currently accept cryptocurrency on the platform.”

For the uninitiated, this is not eBay’s first shave with cryptocurrencies as the company, on numerous occasions, has expressed its intention to introduce support for crypto payments along with non-fungible token (NFT) trading.

Targeting Gen Z and Millennials

During the interview, Lannone said that Gen-Z is a priority target for the company.

When asked if the company plans to integrate support for the leading cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and others, Lannone said:

“We’re not accepting crypto currently, but on March 10, we’re going to go deeper on all of these things, payments, advertising, our focus categories.”

Lannone acknowledged that the company changed its policies last year to enable users to trade NFTs on the platform. However, the company did not make any official announcement about the NFT integration at the time.

He said:

“We did change our policies last year so that you could trade NFT on the platform and essentially, you know, eBay is a place where people have something to sell and people have something by show up.”

Adding:

“So even without announcing anything or doing anything, people started trading NFT on a platform. It reminded me of many years ago when people just started selling cars when we didn’t even have a vehicle business at that point. So we’re seeing the same type of thing [with NFT].”

Lannone ended the interview by saying:

“eBay will be the place where people trade goods, whether they be physical or digital. So over time, you know, we want this to be the marketplace for sustainability.”

The rising popularity of NFTs has taken the world by storm as an increasing number of celebrities continue to endorse their digital collectibles on social media platforms.

As previously reported, Elon Musk reportedly bought a rare golden Bored Ape NFT for a fee worth more than $1.5 million.

Similarly, on February 16, crypto.news reported that the New York Stock Exchange plans to launch an NFT marketplace soon.