American payment processing company Paypal, which facilitates online money transfers and serves as a digital alternative to conventional payment methods such as cheques and money orders, have recently introduced a blockchain based in-house reward system for its employees along with a native token.
The token, however, cannot be exchanged for cash, and is offered as a form of perk, while providing employees with hands-on experience in dealing with distributed ledger technology through internal trading.
Michael Todasco, the company’s Director of Innovation, confirmed the launch. The blockchain was created over the course of half a year by PayPal’s San Jose advancement hub to enhance the team’s know-how of the technology.
The blockchain serves as a ledger for monitoring and trading tokens that can be utilized to claim interior company awards. At the beginning, certain quantities of tokens are allotted to every employee, which can subsequently be increased by suggesting innovative thoughts, partaking in company programs and trading.
Although they presently have no redeem value beyond the interior affairs of PayPal, tokens can be utilized to trade in dozens of skilled benefits such as participating in leisure activities with highest officials of the company.
Todasco also said that,
“[It’s a] Venmo-like feed people can like and comment on and see all the activity going on within PayPal related to innovation.”
Even though there are affirmations that PayPal will incorporate blockchain and cryptocurrencies into its day to day applications, this seems to be a good step in the direction of acclimatizing its workforce with the latest innovation. The fact that the top cross border payment processor trials a fundamental blockchain usage case has encouraged several industry specialists to speculate that the company can take optimistic steps towards the embracing of blockchain technology for now.
However, PayPal is not the initial company in this way to venture into blockchain. A few months ago, BBVA, the Spanish multinational banking group, also introduced a comparative token system to cheer upbeat employee activities.
At that time, Carlos Kuchkovsky, the company’s CTO for New Digital Businesses has said
“We are global pioneers when it comes to using tokens for training in a corporate environment…For the first time, BBVA is exploring token-based economic models.”
E-commerce giant, Amazon recently introduced two innovative blockchain platforms. Japan’s principal shipping company, Nippon Yusen KK also declared recently about the introduction of native crypto currency, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, a strategy intended at cutting costs linked with remiting salaries to workforce overseas.
