Walmart Interest in Crypto increases after noticing that consumer focus on Crypto spiked over the past few years. Now the company says it plans to include Crypto into its future payment strategy.
At the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit, Walmart Global CTO, Suresh Kumar, spoke about the retailer’s future plans.
Bitcoin Gain?
Bitcoin, as the largest and most popular crypto, would likely benefit most from such a move from Walmart. Crypto traders and investors already see that as a bullish indicator for bitcoin.
Bitcoin is already the most popular crypto used for payments, and if Walmart adopted use of cryptocurrency payments, that could give it a further boost.
Metaverse
It was also reported that Walmart is embracing the metaverse.
Walmart noticed that their customers have been spending increasing amounts of time in virtual worlds. And because of that, they want to buy virtual goods, such as merchandise for an online avatar. They often use cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to do that. Obviously, Walmart and other retailers want a piece of that action.
Walmart already supports the metaverse, and in September 2022 they introduced Walmart Land and Walmart’s Universe of Playing on Roblox, a popular gaming platform used in the metaverse. This was a good choice for Walmart because Roblox had 52.5 million daily active users, who spend 11.3 billion engagement hours on games from 12 million creators, with 32 million experiences. That got Walmart’s attention.
Walmart Interest in Crypto. Image by jimaro morales from Pixabay, modified by BitNewsDay
Walmart and Social Media
The company has been lead into rethinking the payment options it should offer customers because it sees new ways that people are now using social media combined with payment methods.
Walmart is increasingly using high-tech systems. For example they now use livestream events on social media as a way of showing customers interesting things about new products and how they are used. While watching these events viewers may want to buy the products. To make the purchases, customers appear to have less hesitancy spending crypto than pulling out their credit card.
Walmart’s shoppable live streams for example have been tested on Twitter, TikTok, and Youtube.
Dominic Basulto, writing at msn.com, says social media is also inserting itself within and between e-commerce and cryptocurrencies. He reports that the Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram have now allowed users to connect their virtual wallets to those platforms to showcase their NFTs in social media. Basulto also writes for the Motley Fool and may be connected to Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi Zuckerberg, who is on the Motley Fool board.
Walmart Interest in Crypto, But When?
Basulto Notes that Walmart does not currently accept cryptocurrency as a payment method even though there were many rumours about them considering it.
Bitcoin Magazine and many others saw Kumar’s observations as a definite possibility, as seen in this tweet and many others over the past four days:
NEW – Walmart CTO: "Crypto will become an important part of how customers transact." #Bitcoin
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) October 20, 2022
They may just be pushing for the start of a new Bitcoin bull run, as Bitcoin ebbs and flows around $19,000 USD.
