Crypto Will Be Vital in Customer Transactions: Walmart CTO

Suresh Kumar – Global Chief Technology Officer of Walmart – thinks the cryptocurrency industry will significantly impact the future of finance, particularly how consumers conduct transactions.

He reiterated the corporation’s positive stance on the sector, saying clients should be able to purchase products and “derive value” out of digital assets.

Crypto Could Inspire Customers

In a recent interview for Yahoo Finance, Kumar forecasted that people will use cryptocurrencies to pay for both physical and digital products and services, making the asset class a “major” area of disruption:

“I think that there are three major areas of disruption. Crypto falls in sort of the middle of it. I have talked before about the way in which customers are getting inspired and discovering products. That is changing.”

The executive further predicted that the Metaverse and various social media platforms could stimulate crypto’s popularity by targeting such consumers:

“And part of that is going to happen in the Metaverse. Part of that is going to happen on live streams inside your social media app. So whether it is physical goods or virtual goods, they play a part in terms of what the customer wants.”

Envisioning that digital assets will revolutionize the way people conduct financial settlements, Kumar said Walmart will aim to provide “friction-free” cryptocurrency options to its clients.

Headquartered in Arkansas, the multinational retail corporation is the world’s largest private employer having over 2.2 million employees. While it does not accept direct cryptocurrency payments, clients could purchase Amazon gift cards at Bitrefill with bitcoin and then spend at Walmart.

The Recent Crypto Endeavors

In September last year, some sources indicated that Walmart embraced Litecoin (LTC) as a payment method. The rumors infused huge excitement in the space and positively affected the coin’s price. Nonetheless, it turned out to be fake news causing huge volatility in the market.

A month later, Walmart interacted with the crypto world for real by collaborating with Coinstar to install 200 bitcoin ATMs across the company’s stores in the USA. It displayed intentions to increase the number of such machines to 8,000 in the future.

At the beginning of 2022, the giant hypermarket chain filed documents with American regulators to launch its own cryptocurrency, NFTs, and hop on the Metaverse bandwagon.