The giant in the payment platform- PayPal has been maintaining an aloof stance from entering into Blockchain landscape since quite a while. But finally, PayPal too ventured into the crypto world. It has released an internal employee incentive program which is based on Blockchain technology. This program was created in PayPal’s innovation lab in San Jose, California. This six month long project involved a participation of 25 teams and finally, it went live in the month of November.
As per the reports from Cheddar; the director of innovation of PayPal’s innovation lab- Mr. Michael Todasco, said-
“The platform is a Venmo like feed people can like and comment on and see all the activity going on within PayPal related to Innovation.”
The employee incentive program rewards employees in the form of crypto tokens. These tokens are valid only within PayPal. These crypto tokens can be earned by joining innovation programs and contributing ideas. In addition, the staff can trade these crypto tokens too. The trading and the transaction of thee tokens will be accounted on the program’s Blockchain ledger. The employees can choose to redeem their tokens over a range of 100 rewards, or various experience the company offers. As per the reports from CCN & PokerNews.World, these rewards will include ‘experiences like a poker tournament with PayPal Vice Presidents, a morning of martial arts with PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, and borrowing the dog of the head of the investor relations’, among others.
According to the reports from Cheddar, Todasco pointed at the pattern of PayPal of first testing new platforms in its labs and eventually if everything gives out a green signal, the company rolls them into the main business. This pattern can be confirmed from the instance when PayPal labs were working on voice technology as a prototype some time ago. With the in-depth study and confident results, PayPal included voice projects as a part of the company’s development programs. Therefore, we can derive a possibility of PayPal currently treating the Blockchain based employee incentive program as a prototype, and soon upon satisfactory results, the company may opt to spread the program on a larger internal level or even it may cater it as an external service.
In May, John Rainey, PayPal CEO, expressed his views about Bitcoin being very volatile for the merchants. His views also depict the thinking of PayPal with regards to cryptocurrency landscape. Rainey added that with the increase in the merchant demands, the company may revise its policy on Bitcoin.
Although PayPal’s presence in cryptocurrency world seems to be too selective currently, there are chances that internally the company is trying to build a strong grip over the Blockchain based technology. This could be possible as, earlier this year, the company filed for a patent for a system that can improve the speed and efficiency of cryptocurrency payments. Although, patents may or may not lead to concrete steps.
On the other hand, recently PayPal application was taken over by ‘Square’s Cash App on Google Play Store. The twist is that the Square app does allow Bitcoin trading services. And with such lucrative combinations, the Square app enjoys the number one position in the finance application domain in the U.S. region.
PayPal on the other front has made it to the IBD top 50 screen list. This list represents the market leaders in stock growths and the highly competitive relative rate strength. Other companies who made to the IBD top 50 included Exelixis (EXEL) and Five Below (FIVE), who were also two new entries to the list.
PayPal is expected to expedite digital payments worth 582 Billion Dollars, which will be almost four times more than the payments made in the year 2012. There is a possibility of partnership expansion of Facebook and PayPal with other giants such as WhatsApp and Instagram; which will only bring more business to the company. In one of the reports from CNBC, Lisa Ellis and Michael Nathanson said-
“We roughly estimate that possible WhatsApp and Instagram partnership could bring 40 to 60 million new users to PayPal’s network each, and the Marketplace partnership could generate on the order of about 1.5 Billion dollars of increment revenue for PayPal. It is quite likely that Facebook and PayPal announce a significant expansion of their partnership sometime in the coming months.”
The mutual benefits of the two giants will help to boost PayPal’s growth to newer heights.
