The consumer demand for cryptocurrency is not yet high enough for payment companies to start offering support for it, Bill Clerico, CEO of payments firm WePay, said yesterday.
While it remains a “very interesting” area, Clerico told Bloomberg in an interview yesterday, consumers have not pressed WePay for crypto support, he said. This is not out of the norm for payments companies—no one, according to Clerico, “has figured out a killer-use case.”
WePay, an online payments provider, was bought by bank JPMorgan Chase in October 2017 for approximately $420 million.
Chase’s own stance on cryptocurrency may be best described as neutral: bank CEO Jamie Dimon has made several remarks on digital currencies, not all of them kind, while Marianne Lake, the bank’s chief financial officer, has stated that Chase is open to virtual currency possibilities.
Clerico’s remarks also come at a time when many are expressing concern about the energy it takes to mine cryptocurrency — such a massive consumption of energy it’s on the verge of killing electricity in Iceland — a problem payment companies would need to solve to add effective support.
Read more at PYMNTs and Bloomberg.
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