By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
CEO Dan Schulman noted that the volume of crypto transactions on PayPal exceeded expectations.
Global online payments company PayPal Holding Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL) has announced that it would be extending its crypto products to the UK. Upon a successful expansion, the UK would be the first market outside the US to enjoy PayPal’s crypto products.
PayPal announced its debut into the crypto market in October last year. At the time of the announcement, the company said that all its eligible account holders in the US could buy, hold, or sell cryptocurrency. PayPal also added that the crypto service would initially support Bitcoin (BTC) and three other digital assets. The other cryptocurrencies backed by the PayPal crypto service are Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC).
During the company’s Q4 earnings call, CEO Dan Schulman noted that the volume of crypto transactions on PayPal exceeded expectations. The CEO said that active users who bought crypto on the PayPal app logged in twice as often in the quarter. As of the 11th of January, crypto trading volume on PayPal had reached its record high of $242 million in transactions.
In the earnings result for the fourth quarter, PayPal recorded 16 million Net New Active Accounts (NNAs).
Now, the crypto products which were only available in the US would launch in the UK. PayPal revealed the crypto service expansion during its investors’ day on the 11th of February. PayPal said the crypto service would be available to UK residents in the coming month.
PayPal’s executive vice presidents and chief strategy, growth and data officer Jonathan Auerbach said:
“We’re actually looking at our crypto services to help position PayPal, to help shape the role of cryptocurrencies and [central bank digital currencies] in consumer payments, commerce and financial services safely and securely. So early days for us here, but we’re moving rapidly.”
More as PayPal Plans to Expand Crypto Services to UK
In a tweet, CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla announced that PayPal is also planning to offer its crypto products to Venmo wallet holders. As stated in the tweet, the crypto services would be added to Venmo wallets in the first half of 2021. Quintanilla also said that PayPal is expanding Venmo internationally over the next five years. In addition, the CNBC journalist noted that Venmo would begin to issue out its credit cards more broadly.
* PAYPAL WILL ADD CRYPTO TO VENMO WALLETS IN FIRST HALF $PYPL (h/t @JohnSpall247) pic.twitter.com/ETsgKqXC6V
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) February 11, 2021
Recently, Schulman said that PayPal was “significantly investing” in the crypto space. An earlier report by Coinspeaker revealed PayPal’s plans to offer crypto payments to its 29 million merchants before Q1 ends.
Over the past year, PayPal has been recording increases as it expands its services. According to data compiled by MarketWatch, PayPal stock has grown nearly 137% over the past year. The company’s stock has also increased by 21.70% since the beginning of January and advanced further by almost 51% in the last three months. PYPL has also surged 17.75% over the past month and 5.41% in the last five days. PayPal is currently trading at $289.60, a 1.60% gain over its previous close of $285.03.