Payments giant PayPal is reportedly planning to launch cryptocurrency services for its 305 million active account holders. According to a Coindesk report, several sources say that PayPal, as well as Venmo, will allow users to buy and sell cryptocurrency.
Spanning the globe, PayPal currently operates in over 200 countries and regions and supports over 100 currencies.
One of three sources tells Coindesk that PayPal will work with cryptocurrency exchanges and appears to be exploring a partnership European Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp and expanding its partnership with Coinbase which already allows US, European and Canadian crypto customers to withdraw their fiat balances to PayPal.
“My understanding is that they are going to allow buys and sells of crypto directly from PayPal and Venmo. They are going to have some sort of a built-in wallet functionality so you can store it there.”
PayPal has the kind of brand name that could help cement Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as mainstream forms of money. At the same time, PayPal would become another middleman, “working with multiple exchanges to source liquidity,” according to the report, to bring peer-to-peer cryptocurrencies to the masses.
PayPal posted its most recent job listing for a blockchain research engineer earlier this month. The listing reveals the company’s broad objectives to transform the payments industry beyond its tranditional digital transactions.
“Through a combination of technological innovation and strategic partnerships, PayPal creates better ways to manage and move money, and offers choice and flexibility when sending payments, paying or getting paid.
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The blockchain research group (BRG) is a newly formed group within the Strategic Technology Enablement team chartered with establishing expertise and opinions on emerging blockchain technologies and their potential uses within PayPal. As a research function, the BRG will seek to understand the current and near-future state of blockchain technologies, their relative advantages and disadvantages, and their applicability to PayPal’s core and adjacent businesses.”
Owned by PayPal, Venmo posted a 48% year-on-year growth rate for the first quarter of 2020, withe a net payment volume of $31 billion and over 40 million active accounts, according to data compiled by Statista. For the same period, PayPal posted a 19% growth rate.
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