PayPal Reportedly To Offer Direct Crypto Sales

PayPal will offer direct cryptocurrency sales for customers, CoinDesk reports.

The FinTech giant, which has 325 million customers, will allow this feature for those who want a new wallet functionality for the popular service, according to unnamed sources, the report said. It would be an upgrade of the current PayPal functions for withdrawing funds from sources like San Francisco’s Coinbase.

It is not known yet which cryptocurrencies will be supported, but one of the sources CoinDesk talked to said it would likely include multiple different exchanges. Coinbase, along with Luxembourg’s Bitstamp, were among the names discussed as likely to be involved, though neither had a comment on the proceedings.

Another source said the feature could potentially be rolled out “in the next three months, maybe sooner,” according to the news outlet.

The company has been affiliated in some measure with Coinbase for years, including Coinbase’s 2018 change to allow fiat withdrawals for U.S. customers using PayPal. European and Canadian Coinbase users gained the option to withdraw to PayPal last year.

Cryptocurrency is increasingly becoming mainstream-accepted, what with Jack Dorsey’s Square app allowing bitcoin purchases through Cash App in 2018 and then proceeding to rake in $306 million in bitcoin revenue in its last earnings report. And London’s Revolut, which started offering cryptocurrency in 2017 after partnering with Bitstamp, has raised $500 million in February of this year.

PayPal has said it was never really part of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency initiative and had been the first major brand to pull out. In addition, PayPal is looking at boosting its efforts toward expanding its blockchain presence and looking to the future on payments expertise. The company has said it wants to focus on this area of commerce so as to help those unbanked.

According to Chief Financial Officer John Rainey, the digitization of the payments industry can mean a huge leap forward for around 2 billion people in the world who don’t have a checking or savings account, among other common things.