Since launching our cryptocurrency capabilities in the U.S. in October 2020, we have been actively engaging with our customers to better understand their needs to help ensure we are providing a trusted and secure platform to buy, hold, sell and checkout with cryptocurrency.
On July 15, PayPal announced that it was increasing limits on customer purchases of crypto to $100,000 per week for U.S. users, with no annual restrictions.
One of the leaders in crypto at the firm, Jose Fernandez Da Ponte, cited “the ever changing needs of our customers” in the announcement. Alongside the increase in purchase limits, Da Ponte also spotlighted PayPal’s efforts to expand its crypto educational services.
Recently, PayPal announced that its U.S. users can now use cryptocurrencies to make payments. The feature is named “Checkout with Crypto”. This feature is available to anyone with cryptocurrency holdings in the U.S. The popularity of crypto investing has boosted PayPal’s earnings, resulting in a record year in 2020 and positioning both PayPal and its Venmo subsidiary to influence merchants to directly accept cryptocurrency. PayPal also plans to expand its crypto support to the U.K. over the next several months and is positioning itself as a central bank digital currency distributor.
PayPal’s crypto offerings are, however, fully custodial. Users do not have the ability to withdraw their digital assets into outside wallets. Since launch, speculation has been rife as to when the firm will enable withdrawals outside of its own platform, which executives have confirmed to be a priority.
