In what can be seen as a major push to crypto adoption, the Big Four auditing giant PwC Luxembourg will start offering Bitcoin payments services citing massive demand from its client.
On Monday, September 2, the Big Four auditing giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) announced that its Luxembourg office will start accepting Bitcoin payments from the 1st of October 2019. In the official press release, the auditing giant said that to integrate Bitcoin payments for its services, they would collaborate with a Luxembourg-based local crypto exchange.
We are stepping further into #blockchain and #crypto-assets by accepting #Bitcoin payments from our clients as from 1 October 2019.
Read more about it here 👇 #pwcdigit— PwC_Luxembourg (@PwC_Luxembourg) September 3, 2019
PwC Luxembourg said that this move comes after growing demand from its clients and thus decided to support the country’s ‘crypto ecosystem’. Besides, the company said that it strongly believes in the potential of blockchain technology and its role in the economy for “medium to long-term”.
The Luxembourg office of PwC already offers its clients blockchain-based services along with the crypto-assets advisory services. The firm believes that allowing crypto payments will help the company to serve its clients in a better way. Across all its offices globally, PwC has more than 400 employees working on blockchain and crypto-based matters. some of the company’s major offerings include “PwC-branded blockchain products, including a crypto-audit tool, smart trace, smart credentials, etc.”
Thomas Campione, PwC Luxembourg’s Blockchain & Crypto-assets Leader, said that the crypto payments service will help the company better understand the risks and opportunities offered by decentralized digital assets. He added:
“As part of the Firm’s market assessment, what quickly became clear is that we could not continue to invest in the field, promote it, build solutions for clients and support their transformation while not also being exposed to it. Our role is to lead and it is only by being an active leader with exposure that we at PwC Luxembourg can understand the challenges inherent to the crypto world.
It is very difficult to properly appreciate the challenges of AML/KYC-enhanced due diligence in a world made of public/private keys, with the complexity and risks of custodial solutions, or to comprehend the decentralized finance ecosystem growing “next door” without being exposed to it in its day-to-day activities”.
After Monaco, Luxembourg is Europe’s second-most safe tax haven for ultra-high rich individuals and companies. Thus, providing crypto services to them could give a major push to global cryptocurrency adoption. John Parkhouse, the Territory Senior Partner and CEO of PwC Luxembourg, stated:
“The development of blockchain technology, and the emergence of a new decentralized economy supported by the rise of crypto-assets are heavily reliant on an individual’s ability to understand the disruptive and pervasive impact of these new concepts.
Even more importantly, it depends on the ability of the ecosystem to move synchronously. Upskilling will be key and the capacity to build and grow the ecosystem will be at least as important to harvest the true benefits of the technology. This is true whether it is about dramatic cost-saving through process streamlining, improvement of social capital due to new decentralized business models, or by unlocking hidden-value currently stuck in the economy through tokenization.”
