Amazon Wants a Leader For Its Digital Currency and Blockchain Product Unit

Amazon seems determined to maintain its reputation as an innovative company and is looking to experiment with cryptocurrencies through a digital currency payment and blockchain unit.

According to an announcement posted on Thursday, Amazon is looking for a blockchain specialist to lead its Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy.

The Payments Acceptance & Experience team is seeking an experienced product leader to develop Amazon’s Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy and product roadmap … You will work closely with teams across Amazon, including AWS, to develop the roadmap, including the customer experience, technical strategy and capabilities as well as the launch strategy.

What Amazon is Looking For

The expert must have at least an MBA or equivalent degree, 10+ years of business or technology experience, team management skills, understanding of data and metrics, and good communication skills.

The corporation did not disclose any salary offer. The person must be based on or willing to move to Seattle, Washington.

Amazon seems to be convinced of the need to innovate in the field of payments and finance. The cryptocurrency and blockchain development team is a sign of the company’s interest in exploring these emerging technologies to offer better financial products.

According to an email shared by Business Insider, Amazon’s team confirmed its interest in exploring an approach to the world of cryptocurrencies. Still, they did not specify whether it would be through the development of a proprietary currency or through the acceptance of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment:

“We’re inspired by the innovation happening in the cryptocurrency space and are exploring what this could look like on Amazon … We believe the future will be built on new technologies that enable modern, fast, and inexpensive payments, and hope to bring that future to Amazon customers as soon as possible.”

An Old Relationship With Crypto

Amazon’s interest in the world of cryptocurrencies isn’t new. Back in 2017, it purchased, at least preemptively, a number of domains linking its brand to cryptocurrencies, including amazoncryptocurrency.com, amazoncryptocurrencies.com, and even amazonethereum.com.

However, at the time, Patrick Gauthier told CNBC that the e-commerce giant did not have much interest in cryptocurrencies and had no plans to support crypto payments.

In fact, the Pay With Moon plugin that allowed payments on Amazon with Bitcoin through Lightning Network had to change its business model to instead allow its users to purchase virtual credit cards instead of paying directly on Amazon’s site.

Also, as Cryptopotato reported in February this year, Amazon launched a job offer for a new payments system involving “Digital and Emerging Payments (DEP),” although they did not mention a direct relationship with Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency either.

This time, however, Amazon seems more willing to go public with its casual relationship with cryptos.