PayPal Holdings Inc will announce later today that it has started letting US consumers use their crypto holdings for payment at millions of its online merchants across the globe. This may offer an important boost to digital assets in everyday commerce.
This applies to those users who have Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, or Litecoin in their PayPal digital wallets. They now have the possibility of converting their holdings into fiat currencies at checkouts in order to make a purchase.
PayPal revealed in late 2020 that it was working on this idea. The service would become available for all 29 million merchants of the company in the following 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,” declared President and CEO Dan Schulman ahead of the formal announcement.
PayPal Is a Visionary
Checkout with Crypto relies on the ability of PayPal users to buy, sell, and hold crypto, a feature that was launched in October 2020. This turned PayPal into one of the largest mainstream financial companies to have its network open to crypto. It has also added to the rally which saw Bitcoin increase in value.
Bitcoin is now worth double than it did at the beginning of the year, as a result of high interest from big financial firms that are awaiting greater levels of adoption and consider the cryptocurrency as being a hedge against inflation.
This launch comes a week following the announcement by Tesla that it is now accepting Bitcoin for cars.
But because of its volatility, Bitcoin is still far from being accepted as a form of payment.
PayPal is faithful that it can contribute to that change since by settling the transaction in fiat currency, merchants won’t have to deal with the volatility risk.
“We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies move from being predominantly an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants,” Schulman concluded.
PayPal won’t charge transaction fees for checkout with crypto, and only one type of coin can be used for each purchase made.