PayPal will let its business clients buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their accounts in the U.S., potentially opening up a larger market for the payments giant.
After letting its retail users do the same via PayPal and Venmo accounts for several years now, the company also saw demand from business owners to buy, hold and sell crypto, the company said Wednesday.
The payments company will also allow U.S. merchants to externally transfer cryptocurrency on-chain to"eligible" third-party wallets, according to the statement. To start, the service will be unavailable to business clients in New York State, the company said, without giving a timetable for when that would change. The company is one of the 20 or soof the Empire State's notoriously stringent BitLicense. It also has a trust license from the state's Department of Financial Services.
Since 2020, PayPal has allowed consumers to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies directly from their accounts. Last year, it unveiled its U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin, PayPal USD , which reached a $1 billion market cap this summer.in a variety of blockchain and digital asset businesses and significant holdings of digital assets, including bitcoin. CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence.