PwC’s Luxembourg Office To Accept Bitcoin Payments From Next Month

In one of the major announcements earlier this week, the Big Four auditing giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) announced that it will start accepting Bitcoin payments from its clients at its Luxembourg branch office.

PwC noted that with the growing client demand, the auditor decided to integrate Bitcoin payments within its financial operations. Besides PwC also notes that it strongly believes that the blockchain technology has a huge role to play in the medium-to-long term in shaping the economy. Thus it wants to be an early adopter along with using cryptocurrency as “secure payment alternative reflecting the evolution of our economy”.

In the official blog post, PwC says that the company is open to acknowledging “both the disruptive dimension as well as the current shortcomings of cryptocurrencies”.

The Bitcoin payments facility for the PwC clients will start from the 1st of October next month. Furthermore, to execute this project PwC has partnered with a local cryptocurrency exchange in Luxembourg.

Thomas Campione, Director, Blockchain & Crypto-assets Leader, PwC Luxembourg, states: “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.

Besides commenting on some of the regulatory challenges, Campione added: “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.”

The Big Four auditing giant is also working on developing a strategy around some of its proprietary blockchain products that include crypto-audit tool, smart trace, smart credentials, etc.

As on date, PwC has more than a staff of 400 working on its different blockchain-based solutions for the company.

John Parkhouse, 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.”