Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

PayPal Releases Cryptocurrency Payments Service by 2021


Wed 04 Nov 2020 | 03:50 PM
Ahmed Yasser

PayPal announced Today, its entry into the cryptocurrency market next year, according to CNBC report. Also, the company plans to let customers use crypto to pay for things from its network of 26 million retailers.

On other hand, the firm has been granted a licence by the New York State Department of Financial Services, allowing it to roll out cryptocurrency payments via PayPal accounts from early 2021. A limited number of companies have been granted Bitlicenses since they came into effect in 2015.

Moreover, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman explained, that the firm hopes the service will encourage global use of virtual coins and prepare its network for new digital currencies that may be developed by central banks and corporations.

“Clearly the world is rapidly moving from physical to digital,” said Shulman, emphasizing the accelerated rate of change within the payments and financial services sectors.

In contrast, many central banks around the world have expressed their intention to develop digital versions of their currencies in the coming years, while Facebook Inc-led the creation of a cryptocurrency project called Libra in 2019, PayPal was a founding member but dropped out after a few months.

Earlier,  the firm has partnered with Paxos, a digital asset platform that embraced regulation from inception, to offer crypto services an important strategic step that allows PayPal to be lockstep in line with regulators.

Noteworthy, PayPal is one of the largest global payment providers, with 346 million active accounts and $222 billion in volume processed in Q2 2020.