By
Chimamanda U. Martha
March 11th, 2024
The Walmart executive will be responsible for forming the company’s digital currency strategy as well as other crypto-related partnerships and investments.
America’s largest brick-and-mortar retail giant Walmart Inc (NYSE: WMT) is looking to hire a crypto product lead. The job opening comes just at a time when more retailers are looking to integrate crypto payments.
With its crypto opening, Walmart is looking to offer a leadership role to identify blockchain and customer trends in the crypto space. The official job posting further notes:
“As Digital Currency/ Cryptocurrency lead at Walmart you will be responsible for developing the Digital Currency strategy and product roadmap. As an expert in Digital Currencies/ Cryptocurrency and Blockchain related technologies, you will drive the vision for the product and capabilities roadmap. You will provide the leadership to identify technology and customer trends and the investments needed to build on those trends”.
Besides, part of the role will also involve driving Walmart’s digital currency strategy. Furthermore, the executive should be involved in forming key crypto-related partnerships and investments.
Walmart has capped the basic requirement for the position as Bachelor’s degree. The person should also have 10 years of experience in product or program management. He/she must have key involvement with technology commercialization along with experience in crypto ecosystem and related technologies.
The Digital Payments Race
With the rising adoption and acceptance of cryptocurrencies, technology market leaders are keen for working on crypto payment systems. Interestingly, the Walmart job posting comes in a month’s time of a similar posting by Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN).
Last month, Amazon published a job opening looking to hire a crypto lead. This led to the floating of strong rumors that Amazon could integrate Bitcoin payments by the end of 2021. However, Amazon denied the claims of any such plans in near future.
Furthermore, other e-commerce platforms like Shopify Inc (NYSE: SHOP) are willing to take a taste of crypto payments. earlier in august, Alchemy Pay joined hands with Binance Pay to facilitate crypto payments at several online merchant stores. Now, the Alchemy Pay merchant networks include players such as Shopify, QFPay, Hong Kong’s Pricerite, Singapore’s Ce La Vi, and others.
However, it is not the first time that Walmart is setting up its feet in the crypto and blockchain market. Previously, the brick-and-mortar retail giant experimented with using blockchain for non-financial applications. This included tracking of food and drugs along the supply chain.
In early 2021, Walmart also created a fintech unit dubbed Hazel. The project’s goal is to create a Walmart “Super App” catering to a broad ecosystem of financial services, such as bank accounts, lending, digital payments.