“There’s a worldview where you can imagine that the world is moving on chain,” said Keller, referring to putting data on blockchains. “Is that happening overnight? No. Some people say long time periods. Other people say very short time periods. I think we will see movement.”
“Imagine a shopper in Guatemala buying a special gift from a merchant in Oklahoma City,” Alex Chriss, president and CEO of PayPal, said in a statement. “Using PayPal’s open platform, the business can accept crypto for payments.”
The move to let customers pay businesses with crypto is PayPal’s latest push into digital assets.
Among the Fortune 500, the fintech giant has been an early adopter of crypto. In 2020, PayPal said that U.S. users would be able to buy, sell, and hold a select group of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. It then expanded that capacity to Venmo.
But during the so-called crypto winter of 2022, PayPal ratcheted down its public rhetoric on crypto. Now, as crypto markets are soaring and President Donald Trump’s administration casts a favorable eye on digital assets, it’s charging ahead.
PayPal plans to expand the ability for merchants to accept crypto to larger enterprise customers in the U.S. and globally, but a spokesperson declined to provide a timeline.
