Breaking: PayPal customers in the U.S. can purchase cryptocurrencies now

Although the new service by PayPal was set to launch in early 2020, it seems that due to the initial demand, the payment platform is already allowing eligible U.S. PayPal customers to purchase, sell and hold cryptocurrencies. A PayPal spokesperson stated:

Due to initial demand from our customers, we’ve also increased our weekly cryptocurrency purchase limit from $10K/week to $20K/week

Initially, PayPal announced its desire to help account holders to understand the blockchain ecosystem through educational content talking about the risks and opportunities related to this kind of investment option. 

PayPal was granted a conditional Bitlicense by the New York State Department of Financial Services and works through a partnership with Paxos Trust Company to provide cryptocurrencies to all its users. The platform plans to expand these features to Venmo in the first half of 2021. Dan Schulman, president, and CEO of PayPal said:

The shift to digital forms of currencies is inevitable, bringing with it clear advantages in terms of financial inclusion and access; efficiency, speed and resilience of the payments system; and the ability for governments to disburse funds to citizens quickly. Our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange. We are eager to work with central banks and regulators around the world to offer our support, and to meaningfully contribute to shaping the role that digital currencies will play in the future of global finance and commerce