Popular payment giant PayPal has announced that all eligible customers in the United States can now buy digital currency directly from their PayPal accounts.
Announcing the new development via Twitter, PayPal disclosed that it has ended its waitlist after conducting a narrow rollout over the past weeks.
We are pleased to announce that starting today, all of our eligible US customers can now buy, hold and sell #Cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal accounts. We’ve also increased our weekly purchase limit to $20K. Learn more: https://t.co/5yrpNOuA6y pic.twitter.com/2nZHm9qCNI
— PayPal (@PayPal) November 12, 2020
According to the announcement, all U.S.-based eligible PayPal users will be able to buy, sell, and save digital currency directly from within the PayPal app. Also, the payment firm noted that it would begin its cryptocurrency trading with initial offerings for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC).
The payment behemoth intends to spread cryptocurrency payments to over 26 million merchants worldwide. It has furthermore set a new limit of $20,000 per week for trading, thereby doubling the previously announced amount. Additionally, the payment giant noted that U.S. users will be alerted of any added feature in the near future.
The Inevitable Shift To Digital Currency
Dan Schulman, PayPal president and CEO, noted that the new offering was launched as a realization of the inevitable shift to digital forms of currencies.
He further explained that PayPal is focused on bringing with it clear advantages in terms of financial inclusion and access. The platform also aims to facilitate the efficiency, speed, and resilience of the payments system. Subsequently, providing governments with the ability to disburse funds to citizens easily and quickly.
Shulman also added, “We are eager to work with central banks and regulators around the world to offer our support.” He furthermore added that all parties involved will help shape the role of cryptocurrency in the global finance sphere. The payment firm also disclosed that it intends to extend the new features to Venmo and other selected international markets by 2021.
Additionally, PayPal will charge very little in fees for transactions as stated below:
- $0.50 for transactions up to $24.99
- 2.3% for transactions from $25 to $100
- 2% for transactions from $100.01 to $200
- 1.8% for transactions of $200.01 to $1,000
- 1.5% for transactions over $1,000
Grand Competition for Jack Dorsey’s Square
It is worth noting that PayPal’s new interest in digital currency will bring more healthy competition as well as increase crypto adoption. Notably, it would bring competition to Jack Dorsey’s mobile payments app, Square. The platform recently disclosed that it raked in $1.63 billion in Bitcoin sales during the third quarter of 2020.
Also, PayPal would provide educational content to assist new users to understand digital currency and the crypto ecosystem
BTC Price
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $18,077.38, with a market cap of $335,279,214,033 and a 24-hour trading volume of $41,065,781,337.
Find out more about BTC on the Altcoin Buzz YouTube channel.
