The digital payments company PayPal is reportedly working on offering crypto services, in a move which would revolutionise the scale of crypto adoption
According to reports from numerous CoinDesk sources, PayPal and Venmo are planning on offering crypto services to their users. The move could potentially happen in the next few months.
It is understood that PayPal would offer the option to purchase cryptocurrencies directly from users’ accounts by using exchanges such as CoinBase and Bitstamp, with whom PayPal has long-standing relationships.
Venmo, which is owned by PayPal, saw impressive growth figures for Q1 this year, and PayPal has made no secret that they are looking to expand the company this year. The scope for growth for both PayPal and Venmo by adding crypto services could potentially be massive.
PayPal searches for someone to lead the project
For many, multiple industry insider sources might not be enough to convince them of the validity of such reports, however, the integration of digital assets to the payments system seems to be much more than rumour. On PayPal’s public job listing page there are two positions listed, the first is a Technical Lead – Crypto Engineer, and the second is a Blockchain Research Engineer.
These positions will be bolstering the eight Blockchain Engineer positions PayPal filled at the beginning of 2020. It seems likely that the Technical Lead may be intended to head up a project that would involve integrating the existing PayPal wallet with a blockchain compatible one.
At the end of 2019, PayPal filed a report, in which it listed the progress of Blockchain technology as a ‘Rapid, significant and disruptive technological change’ in their sector. PayPal, to its credit, has been an innovative and adaptive company since its inception. As such, it is no stretch to postulate that they recognise the potential of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Not only would this development undoubtedly be a massive coup for PayPal, it would be a great success for cryptocurrencies as well. PayPal would grant easy access for its 325 million users, not including Venmo’s users, which total over 52 million. This combined figure could be potentially revolutionary in terms of adoption.
PayPal also has a diverse user-base. The company has customers from over 200 different countries and supports over 100 separate currencies. This means that the various use-cases of different cryptocurrencies could be used by many demographics after this integration takes place, which is another great leap towards the mass adoption of these revolutionary digital assets.
