Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the carpooling giant explores the use of crypto as a payment method, which marks the third time that the company has made this complaint since 2021.
Speaking Thursday at the Bloomberg Tech Conference in San Francisco, Khosrowshahi said that the company was in the “study phase” of the evaluation of stablecoins for operational purposes.
“I think that stablecoins are one of the most interesting instance in the crypto that have a practical advantage beyond being a value store,” said Khosrowshahi.
Uber was a first member of the Diem Association (formerly Balance), joining for 2019 to support the initiative of Stablecoin now disappeared from Meta aimed at remodeling world payments.
“You can have your opinions on Bitcoin, it is a proven merchandise, and people differ in the place where it goes. But the stablecoins seem quite promising, especially for global companies that move money internationally,” Khosrowshahi continued on Thursday. “It’s super interesting for us, and we will certainly take a look.”
The remarks echo what Khosrowshahi said to CNBC in September 2021, when he said that Uber would “consider” the acceptance of the BTC and other cryptocurrencies as payment.
At the time, he rejected the plans to put the crypto to the balance sheet of the company, saying: “We will ensure the safety of our money.”
Later, in February 2022, Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg that the company would “absolutely” accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment in “a given moment” in the future, but stressed that the moment was not yet good.
“We have conversations all the time,” Khosrowshahi said at the time. “While the exchange mechanism becomes cheaper and becomes more respectful of the environment, I think you will see us relying on Crypto a little more.”
When he made comments related to the crypto in 2021, the BTC exchanged flat for the next three months.
However, its comments from February 2022 occurred weeks before the start of a major market correction that shakes the industry, which started later in the spring.
