- Shopify now allows clients to pay using cryptocurrency and facilitates NFT sales.
- Tobi was an early adopter of e-commerce, founding the ecommerce firm in 2006.
Coinbase said that it would appoint the CEO and co-founder of Shopify to its board of directors. According to the firm, Tobias ‘Tobi’ Lutke will add years of expertise and a fresh perspective to the company’s efforts to grow its product portfolio and enter new markets.
With Shopify’s global reach — it services merchants in more than 175 countries — and experience spanning banking, payments online apps, and “the internet itself,” Coinbase hopes to capitalize on the strengths of both companies.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said:
“Tobi’s experience as a founder & CEO, scaling his business from a small, niche online marketplace into what has become a critical backbone of global e-commerce will help guide Coinbase as we seek to bring crypto to more people and businesses around the world.”
Bright Professional Career
When Lutke started his professional career, he was an active part of the open-source community, contributing to Ruby on Rails, Liquid, and ActiveMerchant, among others. He was an early adopter of e-commerce, founding a snowboarding equipment firm in 2004 that later developed into Shopify, which he founded in 2006, a multinational ecommerce firm. It now allows clients to pay using cryptocurrency and facilitates the sale and minting of NFTs.
The nomination of Lutke will bring him into a group of five other current board members, assuming that the official board approval occurs this week. Others who serve on the board include leaders from other significant corporations and venture investors.
