Lately I've been doing some interviews with PayPal and after going in for a second interview, they responded promptly with a hiring decision:
After careful review with the team, we have decided to move forward with another candidate at this time. We were very lucky to have several candidates express interest in the role and therefore had a difficult decision to make. There was no negative feedback in specific from your interviews, we just found an individual who had a strong understanding of the payments space and therefore decided to proceed with them.
I hope you are not too disappointed, we would definitely have no hesitations considering you for other opportunities within eBay so feel free to stay in touch if you see any other opportunities that you feel are a good fit.
Now, I want to preface this by saying the point of this post is not to show that I got turned down by PayPal, but give a sense of their perception toward the concept of bitcoin, and from what I felt their complete lack of internal awareness on how it affects their business model.
I went in and had my 2nd round of interviewing with one of the marketing managers for PayPal Canada. This person was friendly and smart. The longer the interview went on, the more it felt like an interesting conversation than an actual interview. I was eager to learn more about the position while demonstrating how I could help the firm help engage SMBs across the country and "create new streams of revenue" as the posting said, as well as "go-to-market plans that drive additional sustainable growth".
Early and often I mentioned the idea of integrating bitcoin as a payment option. This seemed to be met with apathy from the interviewer and other coworkers in the office who I chatted with briefly. Some had never even heard of it. Others commented "I suppose if you want to buy illicit drugs".
Regardless, I told the interviewer that this type of technology would serve a demographic in Canada which is largely untapped, as many merchants are plagued by traditional merchant charges associated with credit card purchases and PayPal's conventional fee model. The adoption of bitcoin is only growing, and most viably so with the small and medium business sector. Merchants want to learn how to use this bold new design of money. Adopting it as a payment option would surely open a channel of new merchants.
If PayPal were to adopt bitcoin as a payment option, that would open a new stream of revenue from a SMB standpoint which would widen their revenue stream. Just ask the ones who have already done this.
Overstock.com anyone?
Seeing as they decided to go with an "individual who had a strong understanding of the payments space", perhaps they got their guru who had a plan on how to engage new business with the same old options. To me, it was borderline shocking how out of touch some of the employees of the world's largest ecommerce business were in regards to emerging payment technologies. Perhaps they made a conscious decision to shun the light that is bitcoin, or perhaps I just wore the wrong style of tie ...
We may never know.
BTCTP
