Amazon Denies Claims It Will Accept Bitcoin Payments

E-commerce giant Amazon has denied a recent media report claiming that the company will soon accept Bitcoin as a payment method.

Reuters reports that this week Amazon denied a report saying that the e-commerce giant was interested in accepting Bitcoin as a payment method, and planned to implement the process by the end of the year.

The initial report came from London’s City A.M. newspaper which cited an “anonymous insider” with knowledge of Amazon’s future plans. The report drove the price of Bitcoin up as much as 14.5 percent before it eventually settled at a gain of around 6 percent.

City A.M. claimed that Amazon’s recent job advertisement for a cryptocurrency and blockchain lead was evidence of the company’s plans to accept cryptocurrency as payment. The listing called for someone who can “leverage domain expertise in blockchain, distributed ledger, central bank digital currencies and cryptocurrency,” and added that it wants to “develop the case for the capabilities which should be developed, drive overall vision and product strategy, and gain leadership buy-in and investment for new capabilities.”

The anonymous insider told City A.M. “This isn’t just going through the motions to set up cryptocurrency payment solutions at some point in the future – this is a full-on, well-discussed, integral part of the future mechanism of how Amazon will work. It begins with Bitcoin – this is the key first stage of this crypto project, and the directive is coming from the very top… Jeff Bezos himself.”

An Amazon spokesperson has since commented on the claims, stating: “Notwithstanding our interest in the space, the speculation that has ensued around our specific plans for cryptocurrencies is not true. We remain focused on exploring what this could look like for customers shopping on Amazon.”

To be fair, the idea isn’t too far-fetched given that other major companies have discussed accepting Bitcoin in recent months. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently stated that his electric car manufacturer is likely to start accepting Bitcoin for vehicle purchases again; this represents a complete reversal of his previous statement that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin as a payment method due to the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining.