As insurance executives, you know that outages can happen at any time, causing chaos and financial losses for businesses and their customers. The recent global outage experienced by payments firm PayPal is a stark reminder of this fact. According to a Reuters article, the outage affected thousands of users for nearly two hours, causing disruptions to multiple products, including account withdrawals, peer-to-peer payment service Venmo, online checkout, and even cryptocurrency transactions.

The outage occurred on a day when Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, had surged to levels over $98,000, pulling other crypto stocks along with it. PayPal allows its clients to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrency, making the outage even more impactful. Exchanges Coinbase and Kraken also reported outages and deposit delays with PayPal transactions.

As an insurance executive, you understand the importance of being prepared for unexpected events like this. That’s why we at Riskwolf believe that parametric insurance is the way forward for payment firms like PayPal. Parametric insurance is a type of insurance that pays out when a specific event occurs, such as a power outage or a natural disaster. It’s based on objective data, such as weather patterns or power grid data, rather than subjective assessments of damage.

In the case of PayPal’s outage, parametric insurance could have helped the company mitigate its losses. By using real-time data and dynamic risk modeling, Riskwolf enables insurers to build and operate parametric insurance at scale. This means that payment firms like PayPal can turn real-time data into insurance, providing a simple, reliable, and fast solution to unexpected events.

But why is parametric insurance so important for payment firms like PayPal? The answer lies in the nature of their business. Payment firms rely on their systems to be up and running 24/7, processing transactions and providing services to their customers. When an outage occurs, the financial losses can be significant, not to mention the damage to the company’s reputation.

In the case of PayPal’s outage, nearly 9,000 reports of problems with PayPal transactions were submitted to Downdetector, a website that tracks user-submitted reports. This shows the scale of the impact that outages can have on payment firms and their customers.

In conclusion, the recent global outage experienced by PayPal is a reminder of the importance of being prepared for unexpected events. As insurance executives, you have the power to help payment firms like PayPal mitigate their losses and protect their customers by offering parametric insurance solutions. With Riskwolf, you can turn real-time data into insurance, providing a simple, reliable, and fast solution to unexpected events. Don’t wait until it’s too late – get in touch with Riskwolf today to learn more about how we can help you build and operate parametric insurance at scale.

Source: PayPal fixes outage that affected thousands worldwide