Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the Ride-Hailing giant is investigating the use of crypto as a payment method that marks the third time the company has made the claim since 2021.
Khosrowshahi, who spoke on Thursday at the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, said the company is in the “study phase” by evaluating stablecoins for operational use.
“I think stableecoins are one of the more interesting instant immediate immediate crypto that has a practical advantage in addition to being a store of value,” Khosrowshahi said.
Uber was an early member of the Diem Association (previous weight), which ended in 2019 to support Meta’s now-defunct stableCOin initiative aimed at reshaping global payments.
“You can have your opinions about Bitcoin, it is a proven item and people differ about where it goes. But stablecoins seem quite promising, especially for global companies moving money around internationally,” Khosrowshahi continued on Thursday. “It’s super interesting to us and we’ll definitely take a look.”
The comments repeat what Khosrowshahi told CNBC in September 2021 when he said Uber would “investigate” to accept BTC and other cryptocurrencies as payment.
At that time, he rejected any plans to put crypto on the company’s balance and said, “We will keep our cash safe.”
Later, in February 2022, Khosrowshahi Bloomberg told the company that the company would “absolutely” accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment on “a point” in the future, but emphasized that time was not right yet.
“We have conversations all the time,” Khosrowshahi said at the time. “As the exchange mechanism becomes cheaper and becomes more environmentally friendly, I think you will see us leaning into crypto a little more.”
When he made crypto-related comments in 2021, BTC acted flat for the next three months.
However, his comments came in February 2022 weeks before the beginning of an industry-shaking major market correction that started later that spring.
