Paypal plans to roll out direct buying and selling of cryptocurrency through Paypal and Venmo, it’s subsidiary. According to sources close to Coindesk, the company will have to launch a built-in wallet to store cryptocurrency, as well as partner with multiple cryptocurrency exchanges to obtain liquidy.
“My understanding is that they are going to allow buys and sells of crypto directly from PayPal and Venmo,” Coindesk quoted a source.
Paypal shares rallied by 1.2%, while Bitcoin surged to $9,700 after the report.
Currently, the company allows its users to withdraw funds from cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase.
Cryptocurrency is the new holy grail for many fintech apps. Square rolled out bitcoin purchases two years ago, raking in $306 million in bitcoin revenues in Q1 2020.
Paypal’s full immersion into cryptocurrency will align with its Chief Technology Officer earlier comment to an open digital payments platform. Moreover, it offers an avenue to monetize Venmo, currently at 52 million accounts, in line with its CEO 2020 plan.
The company’s CTO Sri Shivananda revealed in an interview that the company is looking to blockchain technology “to see how it can help us contribute to the concept of creating an open digital payments platform that can serve everyone.”
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