PayPal gets green light to support crypto across consumer and merchant networks

The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) has granted PayPal a conditional Bitlicense to partner with New York State-chartered Paxos Trust Company to allow its customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.

Why should we care?
PayPal’s 346 million users will be able to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal accounts from early 2021. They will also be able to convert their crypto balances to fiat currencies with no incremental fees, and merchants won’t be charged additional fees beyond PayPal exchange rates. The company expects to add crypto features to Venmo early next year. Through these vehicles, PayPal hopes to drive mainstream crypto adoption. “PayPal will continue exploring the potential of distributed ledger technologies to improve financial services and assure they are faster, more secure and less expensive,” the company said in a statement, noting that it intends to work with regulators, governments and central banks to make this happen.