As eBay moves towards reaching a wider customer base of Gen Z and millennials, it’s concurrently doing a deep dive on the feasibility of integrating cryptocurrency as a payment option.
The global eCommerce marketplace is anticipated to possibly make some kind of announcement about crypto payments during its March 10 Investor Day 2022, TheStreet reported.
CEO Jamie Iannone told TheStreet that while eBay is not accepting crypto currently, on March 10, “we’re going to go deeper on all of these things, payments, advertising, our focus categories.”
Iannone said eBay is now processing $85 billion in payments volume directly on its platform, which “gives us the ability to open up new forms of payment.”
eBay recently accepted Google Pay and Apple Pay, as well the BNPL option Afterpay in Australia “that appeals to Gen Z.”
See also: eBay Debuts NFT Services
The marketplace started making non-fungible tokens (NFTs) available in May 2021 under the categories of trading cards, music, entertainment and art, PYMNTS reported.
“So even without announcing anything or doing anything, people started trading NFT on a platform,” Iannone told The Street. “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.”
Crypto is just one more initiative eBay is considering as it looks to hook Gen Z as a central audience target, Iannone said.
He pointed to the many initiatives eBay has recently launched that were Gen Z-focused, such as sneaker transactions, which have been a big growth category for the marketplace. He said younger people sell their sneakers, become collectors and are “building new marketing capabilities.”
Read more: eBay on Mobile Cross-Border Transactions’ Popularity and Complexity
Avritti Khandurie Mittal, eBay’s vice president of products, payment and risk, told PYMNTS in January that just over half of eBay’s revenue comes from international operations. As such, mobile international shopping and cross-border transactions have to become as easy as domestic shopping.
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