JPMorgan seeking hire to push banking products onto metaverse, crypto companies

Wall Street megabank JPMorgan is looking to expand its reach in the crypto market, seeking a new business development specialist in its payments group to target new clients across Web3, the metaverse, and crypto. 

The bank — which has provided banking services for crypto exchange Coinbase — noted in a job advert on LinkedIn for a payments business development manager that the firm is keen to grow its business in merchant banking and treasury services "in the Web3, Crypto, Fintech, & Metaverse industry sub vertical."

The new hire would sit in the bank's technology, media, and telecom payments team on the West Coast.

As reported in 2020, JPMorgan took on Coinbase and Gemini as its first crypto exchange clients. More recently, the firm announced in February 2022 that it had opened up a branch in DCG-backed metaverse Decentraland.

Per the job description, the new hire would be responsible for lining up new corporate clients for a wide range of payment products, including transactional FX, liquidity and treasury services, and escrow. 

"There is no industry playbook for these segments. This individual must be comfortable paving a path, creating frameworks, and working with extremely fast moving companies amongst ambiguity," the bank said. "These segments require increased technical knowledge around software that do not fit into the traditional training of front-office financial professionals."

Elsewhere, Wall Street heavyweight Citigroup was looking to hire a global head of digital asset risk management, signifying its own strategic push toward crypto services, as The Block reported in January. In August, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management was seeking a product development manager for the firm’s Investment Solutions Product Development team, which is responsible for supporting more than $900 billion in assets under management. 

To be sure, such job ads don't necessarily mean banks are moving into new crypto opportunities at breakneck speed, as previously noted by Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley.

“Hiring a mid-level person to work on something like this doesn’t guarantee a product comes to market,” said Horsley.