By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
PayPal said the service would initially support four digital assets: Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ethereum (ETH).
Payment service provider PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL) has increased its crypto buying limit to $15,000 weekly for users. The payments giant plans to expand the crypto services in 2021. Currently, only 10% of its U.S. customers have access to the new service.
On the 21st of October, the American payment giant PayPal announced its partnership with Paxos Trust Company to enable crypto services on its platform. Now, PayPal users can purchase goods from the 26 million merchants on PayPal’s network, using cryptocurrency.
PayPal Raises Crypto Buying to $15,000
At the time of the announcement, PayPal said the service would initially support four digital assets. The supported cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ethereum (ETH).
The company also noted in the announcement that customers in the U.S. could begin to buy, sell, and hold the supported digital assets.
Formerly, PayPal users could only purchase digital assets worth $10,000. Now, the payments giant is increasing its purchase limit to $15,000 weekly. The development was unveiled during PayPal’s third-quarter earnings call on the 2nd of November.
According to the CEO of PayPal Dan Schulman, customers interested in the new crypto services are beyond expectations. He added:
“We’re seeing people who have already bought crypto open their wallet several times a day to check out what’s happening with their crypto investments.”
PayPal also assured that its other U.S. customers would have access to the crypto service before December. In addition, other PayPal users internationally will have access to the crypto service in the first half of 2021.
Apart from the expansion plans, PayPal is also planning to launch its mobile payments app Venmo in the first half of the coming year.
PayPal Supports CBDC
As several central banks globally are working towards creating central bank digital currencies (CBDC), PayPal has revealed further plans to support the project.
Stating that the world is speedily transiting from “physical to digital,” the CEO at PayPal Dan Schulman said:
“There is no question that digital currencies are going to be rising in importance, having increasing functionality, and increasing prominence.”
Being a giant in the payments sector, PayPal will support CBDCs by shaping its utility and encouraging merchants to accept digital currencies.
PayPal Reports Gains in Q3
PayPal’s 2020 third-quarter results, published on the 2nd of November, showed that the company pulled in gains to beat Wall Street estimates. In the quarter, the company had the strongest growth in total payment volume and revenue in PayPal’s history.
In addition, PayPal added 15.2 million net new active users during the quarter. Now the payment provider boasts of 361 million active accounts.
Despite exceeding estimates in the third quarter, PayPal’s stock has been declining in the past months. PayPal has dropped nearly 5% over the past three months and 4.62% in the past month. Also, PYPL has lost 4.80% over the last five days. In addition, the company is currently down, trading at a 5.73% loss over its previous close of $187.76.
However, PayPal has surged over 82% over the last twelve months and 73.585 in its year-to-date record.