After paving the way for digital currency innovation at the Bank of England, or BoE, Mark Carney officially joined the board of directors at Stripe – a company that is committed to building new Internet trading solutions.
Stripe introduced Carney as a board member on Sunday, where he joined Christa Davies, Diane Greene, Jonathan Chadwick, Sir Michael Moritz and Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison. The US digital payments company says it will benefit from “Carney’s extensive experience in global financial systems and governance”, especially as it implements new climate efforts.
“The very nature of trade has changed in the past decade,” said Carney. “Stripe has been at the forefront of enabling this new digital economy, providing innovative and resilient global payment solutions for businesses large and small.”
He continued:
“I look forward to supporting Stripe for years to come as they build the global infrastructure that allows the Internet to become the engine of strong and inclusive economic growth.”
Founded in 2011, Stripe is marketed as a complete payment processing platform for e-commerce and other forms of online business. The company first became involved with Bitcoin (BTC) in 2014, before launching BTC payments the following year. However, Stripe would eventually abandon BTC functionality in 2018 due to high rates and slow confirmation times. In October 2019, Stripe also abandoned the Libra project, supported by Facebook, which has since been renamed Diem.
Although Stripe has given up on Bitcoin payments, for now, co-founder John Collison has expressed a positive attitude towards the future of cryptocurrencies, especially in emerging markets where payment systems are still evolving.
Carney also expressed a favorable view of digital assets, especially those supported by central banks. At the 2019 Jackson Hole Symposium, Carney envisioned a future where a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, could replace the US dollar as a global reserve currency.
“It is an open question whether this new synthetic hegemonic currency would be better provided by the public sector, perhaps through a network of central bank digital currencies,” he said at the time.
Carney is almost a year out of office as governor of the BoE. During its seven-year term, the central bank faced the economic consequences of Brexit and the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.