Online retailer Amazon this week received feedback that its hypothetical creation of an “Amazon Coin” would be positively received, while Starbucks, another large traditional consumer company, spoke of plans to use Blockchain on the Starbucks app, also hinting of the possibility of creating their own currency for the app’s use.
A little over half of 1000 respondents who used Amazon in the last month have indicated that they would use the online retailer’s cryptocurrency in the case that Amazon ever branched out into creating the provisionally dubbed “Amazon Coin,” a Feb. 27 survey by LendEDU shows.
LendEDU also asked the same respondents if they would use a bank account created by Amazon as their primary account -- 44.50 percent said yes -- or if they would use an Amazon savings account -- 49.6 percent said they would.
In total, the survey asked 17 questions about the respondents’ views on possible expansions of Amazon beyond online retail, like involvement in pharmaceuticals, mortgage lending, life insurance, and more.
In answer to the general question of whether these respondents trust Amazon to handle their finances more than a traditional bank, a combined around 61 percent said that they either trust Amazon more than or the same as traditional banks.
While Amazon has not announced any plans to create their own digital currency, they have ventured into the Blockchain technologies that are behind most cryptocurrencies. In December of last year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) signed a deal with R3 to use their Blockchain-based Corda platform.
This week, Starbucks Executive Chairman Howard Schultz said in an interview with Fox Business that he sees Blockchain technologies as something that Starbucks will use moving forward:
“I think Blockchain is probably the rails in which a integrated app at starbucks will be sitting on top on of.”
Schultz, who the interviewer pointed out as someone who is not a fan of Bitcoin, added that in relation to Starbuck’s move of testing a cashless store, Starbucks itself could create its own digital currency to be used on their integrated app.
“This is not about Bitcoin, but I do believe that given the framework and the platform that we have on our digital mobile app that we could potentially be one of the first companies to have a proprietary digital currency integrated into our application.”
Last week, Fundstrat strategist Tom Lee had suggested in a report that both Amazon and Starbucks are likely to implement Blockchain technology and “announce a crypto-strategy” this year.