PayPal’s eagerly awaited cryptocurrency payment service is expected to go live on Tuesday in America.
According to an exclusive report from Reuters, the global payment processor is expected to launch its cryptocurrency payment service which will enable US users to pay millions of merchants that use its platform with select cryptocurrencies. The firm expects to have the facility available to all of its merchants, some 29 million, in the next few months.
“This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet,” President and CEO Dan Schulman told Reuters ahead of a formal announcement.
The support of cryptocurrency payments follows PayPal’s headline grabbing launch of its cryptocurrency custody services in October 2020, allowing users to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies on its platform.
The move came around the same time that business intelligence firm MicroStrategy began buying large amounts of Bitcoin with hundreds of millions of dollars from its coffers, converting its treasury holdings into BTC.
Similarly, PayPal’s launch of the cryptocurrency payment options comes just a week after electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla announced that it would begin accepting payments for its vehicles in Bitcoin. This will give the firm another means of acquiring the cryptocurrency, having already adopted the same philosophy as MicroStrategy by investing over $1.5bln of its dollar reserves into BTC in February 2021.
According to PayPal’s October 2020 announcement, users will be able to convert their cryptocurrency balance to fiat currency and merchants will not have any additional fees, as these cryptocurrency transactions will be settled with fiat currencies at normal rates.
“In effect, cryptocurrency simply becomes another funding source inside the PayPal digital wallet, adding enhanced utility to cryptocurrency holders, while addressing previous concerns surrounding volatility, cost and speed of cryptocurrency-based transactions,” the statement read.
