By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
The PayPal CEO noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a fundamental shift in the use of money and has been a catalyst for digital payments. It’s only a matter of time that crypto use comes to the mainstream, he said.
Digital payments giant PayPal Holdings Ltd (NASDAQ: PYPL) has created a major buzz in the market ever since it announced its entry into the crypto market last month. The company is taking quick decisions looking at the overall crypto market developments.
Also, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman has been much vocal about the company’s plans to steer growth. In his recent interview with CNBC Squawk Box, Schulman stated that he expects more crypto use in the mainstream as consumers and businesses move to digital payments.
"As paper money slowly dissipates and disappears from how people are using transactions, central banks especially on the retail side will need to replace paper money with forms of digital fiat currency," says @PayPal CEO Dan Schulman. pic.twitter.com/pLuvc2RxPY
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) November 23, 2020
He also added that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated growth for digital payments in recent times. With the pandemic, consumers are using less cash. Schulman adds that “40 to 70% of consumers no longer want to handle cash”. Earlier this month, PayPal already started the cryptocurrency “buy, hold, and sell” services in the US.
But as PayPal wants to be at the forefront of the digital payments transformation, it plans to bring crypto use for shopping purposes. Schulman said that 28 million registered PayPal merchants will get access to crypto transactions in early 2021. Schulman added:
“One of the things that we allowed is not just making it easy to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies, but very importantly, early next year, we’re going to allow cryptocurrencies to be a funding source for any transaction happening on all 28 million of our merchants. And that will significantly bolster the utility of cryptocurrencies.”
PayPal CEO Positive on CBDCs
As Schulman remains positive on crypto use, he also remains positive on the arrival of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In the past, Schulman has already said that they will be working with central banks to support CBDCs. In his latest interview, he adds that PayPal has consulted with central banks and regulators before launching its crypto services.
“It’s a matter of not if but when and how we’ll start to see more and more central banks issue forms of digital currencies. I think you’ll have more and more utility happen with cryptocurrency,” he added.
PayPal has more than 300 million users registered worldwide. As its full-fledged crypto services go live, this will give a huge world population access to digital currencies. It will be good to see companies like PayPal succeed as this will open doors for other crypto and FinTech startups to succeed. Besides, it will also bring more regulatory clarity on crypto.