PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL), which added cryptocurrency buying, selling and holding services, is now allowing United States-based consumers to pay merchants in cryptocurrencies, the payments company announced on Tuesday.
The feature called ‘Checkout with Crypto’ will be available to all PayPal users across the globe in the coming months.
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The company detailed that the new payment option will automatically appear in the PayPal wallet on checkout pages for customers with sufficient crypto balance to make the purchase. However, the merchants will receive the payments in fiat.
“Enabling cryptocurrencies to make purchases at businesses around the world is the next chapter in driving the ubiquity and mass acceptance of digital currencies,” said Dan Schulman, PayPal’s President and CEO.
The official press release detailed that the users can only use one supported cryptocurrency in a transaction, and there will be no transaction fee.
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PayPal, a big name in the payments industry, added cryptocurrency services in November last year, allowing users to trade cryptocurrencies directly on its platform. Earlier, other crypto exchanges were using its gateway services for deposits.
The California-headquartered company’s direct involvement in crypto is seen as a major breakthrough for the crypto economy, given the platform’s reach across the world. It has 346 million active accounts, domestic and international combined and processed $222 billion in payments in Q2 of 2020.
“As the use of digital payments and digital currencies accelerates, the introduction of Checkout with Crypto continues our focus on driving mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies while continuing to offer PayPal customers choice and flexibility in the ways they can pay using the PayPal wallet,” Schulman added.
Meanwhile, PayPal expanding its presence in the cryptocurrency market with the plans of acquiring custodian startup Curv.