Retail Giant Walmart Outlines Crypto Strategy: Exec Predicts Many Payment Option Disruptions
Walmart’s global chief technology officer has revealed the role of cryptocurrencies in the retail giant’s future. “Cryptocurrency will become an important part of the way customers transact,” the executive said. “We want to make sure there is no friction for customers to be able to transact.”
Executive talks about cryptocurrencies in the future of Walmart
Walmart CTO and Global Development Director Suresh Kumar spoke about cryptocurrencies at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit on Tuesday.
In response to a question about the role of crypto in Walmart‘s future, Kumar said, “I think there are three main areas of disruption. Crypto falls in the middle of this. I’ve talked before about how customers get inspired and discover products. That is changing.”
He continued: “Some of this is going to happen in the metaverse. Some of this will happen on live streams, within your social media app. So whether it’s physical goods or virtual goods, [crypto] plays a role in terms of what the customer wants.” The Walmart executive opined:
Cryptocurrency will become an important part of how customers transact. We want to make sure there is no friction for customers to transact and buy, and how they can extract value from it.“And that’s where I think a lot of disruption will start to happen in terms of different payment methods, different payment options,” he added. “The role of cryptocurrency will continue to play a very important role in this. And, obviously, we want to be where the client really needs us to be”.
“The last part is how the products are discovered, how the products are delivered. There are a lot of disruptions happening there,” Kumar noted, explaining:
When you talk about crypto specifically, it's going to be about discovering products, whether it's internal physical or virtual, whether it's the metaverse or initial, and then how people transact.Walmart has filed several trademark applications in the past year, covering cryptocurrency, metaverse, and non-fungible token (NFT) products and services. The retail giant entered the metaverse last month with the launch of Walmart Land and Universe of Play on Roblox.