PayPal Unleashes Crypto Trading for U.S. Businesses

PayPal announced a new feature allowing PayPal Business accounts to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies directly through their accounts.

This service is now available to merchants across the U.S., excluding those in New York.

Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s senior vice president of blockchain and crypto, noted that businesses have been seeking the same crypto features available to individual consumers.

He expressed excitement about providing this capability, enabling merchants to engage with digital currencies more easily. Merchants can also withdraw their crypto assets to external wallets or offline storage for added security.

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In related news, PayPal launched its own stablecoin, PYUSD, in August 2023. Issued by Paxos, PYUSD is fully backed by U.S. dollar reserves and short-term cash equivalents, offering a 1:1 redemption ratio with the dollar.

The company has since expanded the stablecoin to Solana, attracted by the network’s low transaction fees, making small purchases like coffee more feasible compared to more expensive blockchains like Ethereum.

As a bonus, PYUSD on Solana supports confidential transactions, hiding payment amounts from public view while still ensuring transaction visibility for regulatory compliance. Despite PYUSD’s growth to a $1 billion market cap, it remains far behind larger competitors like Tether and Circle’s USDC, which hold market caps of $118 billion and $35 billion, respectively.

Kosta Gushterov