PayPal customers who have verified their identities will soon be able to trade cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency transactions, on the other hand, are not currently supported for PayPal corporate accounts.
Residents of the United Kingdom will be able to purchase, store, and trade cryptocurrencies through PayPal starting this week – a big milestone for a corporation that began offering digital asset services less than a year ago. PayPal announced Sunday that users in the United Kingdom would soon have access to Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) via PayPal’s website and mobile app. The news marks the first time PayPal’s cryptocurrency services will be available outside the United States – a service that started last November.
Jose Fernandez da Ponte, a senior executive of PayPal’s crypto division, described the pandemic’s “digitalization of money” as one of the key reasons for entering the cryptocurrency space in the first place. He went on to say:
“Our global reach, digital payments expertise, and knowledge of consumer and businesses, combined with rigorous security and compliance controls provides us the unique opportunity, and the responsibility, to help people in the U.K. to explore cryptocurrency.”
PayPal’s selling of cryptocurrency services to residents of the United Kingdom may contribute to the country’s increased exposure to digital assets. PayPal penetration is highest in the United Kingdom, with over 2 million monthly active users.
Since last month, when CEO Dan Schulman warned investors that the United Kingdom is expected to get the service shortly, rumors about PayPal’s crypto growth ambitions have circulated. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the company is also keeping a watch on advances in decentralized finance, or Defi, which could serve as a forerunner to future integration ambitions.
On the regulatory front, the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority, or FCA, is aggressively cracking down on cryptocurrency exchanges that fail to register with the agency. Binance’s activities in the United Kingdom were shut down earlier this summer after the FCA informed the exchange that it was not permitted to offer regulated trading in the country. PayPal’s da Ponte stated that his company is “dedicated to working closely with regulators in the United Kingdom and throughout the world” as it rolls out its cryptocurrency operations.
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