- EBay is creating its first digital wallet for customers to hold their sales earnings and use it to purchase products or pay selling charges, the e-commerce giant announced on Thursday.
- The company further announced the launch of the eBay Vault, a storage facility and digital marketplace for trading cards and other collectibles. The vault will start in the United States next quarter.
- According to the press release, the eBay Vault is expected to secure up to $3 billion in assets over the next three years, making it one of the world’s largest non-government asset warehouses.
EBay Inc is getting ready for the future of money. The new digital wallet offering is part of an effort to expand payment capabilities and allow users to receive payouts on demand or on a schedule. It’s yet to be ocnfirmed whether the wallet will actually be a bitcoin or lightning wallet, though scheduling payments could be easily done with programmable money such as bitcoin.
With the Lightning Network, eBay could also save a lot in transaction fees and offer a variety of features. With over 147 million active buyers, eBay would make a significant impact. To allow users to buy and sell digital and physical items directly with bitcoin and lightning could make history as a stroke of genius in corporate leadership.
A digital wallet to enable the eBay for the Future
Bitcoin is Punk-Rock not Smooth Jazz, but will the corporation be innovative and bold enough? Bitcoin and Lightning payment adoption is still in it’s early days. This could change suddenly.
“Over the past two years, we have fundamentally changed the trajectory of our marketplace. We have demonstrated we can improve customer satisfaction, accelerate our growth, help sellers thrive and attract and retain enthusiast buyers,” Jamie Iannone, CEO of eBay, said in a statement. “We are building an eBay for the future by doubling down on what we do best — connecting sellers and buyers of non-new in-season products.”
The wallet is the result of a years-long effort at eBay to both build and streamline its global payments platform. “The ability to store a cash balance” on the wallet gives buyers and sellers more flexibility, Iannone commented in an interview with MarketWatch.
eBay secure vault storage for digital assets
The California based company revealed that eBay Vault will be a 31,000-square-foot secure storage facility for trading cards and collectibles, which will eventually include luxury goods and hold up to $3 billion in assets within a few years. The secure storage vault reflects another trend: digital assets need physical storage. Is the thesis of the sovereign individual morphing into latest business news?
