PayPal, the online payment processing giant announced the launch of a crypto checkout service for US customers today. This would allow customers to pay in four cryptocurrencies that PayPal currently supports including Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash. This is a significant breakthrough for crypto adoption and usage worldwide given PayPal has over 300 million users and nearly 20 million active merchants.
PayPal Holdings will announce later on Tuesday that it has started allowing U.S. consumers to use their cryptocurrency holdings to pay at millions of its online merchants globally, a move that could significantly boost use of digital assets in everyday commerce.$PYPL
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) March 30, 2021
Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal said,
“This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet,”
Earlier last year PayPal added support for the above-mentioned four cryptocurrencies, however, the users could only buy/sell or hold within the app without any option for using it as a form of payment. The growing demand for cryptocurrencies has brought a rapid change in the stance of many mainstream payment processing giants and financial institutions who are rushing to add crypto support in one form or another.
Yesterday VISA also announced that it would allow the spending of cryptocurrencies using Ethereum and USDC. The crypto payment adoption by two mainstream giants indicates the growing demand for cryptocurrencies in the retail market.
Today, @Visa announced a major industry first: the use of USD Coin (USDC) to settle a transaction with Visa over the @Ethereum public #blockchain: https://t.co/QiCuOGns77 pic.twitter.com/GVVGrzuBgo
— VisaNews (@VisaNews) March 29, 2021
Mainstream Crypto Adoption Has Begun
Both VISA and PayPal are the market leaders of mainstream financial payment processing, thus their indulgence and allowing crypto usage via their platform is a clear sign of mainstream demand for cryptocurrencies. Schuman explained,
“We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies move from being predominantly an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants,”
Only a year ago many of these financial companies which are currently rushing to add crypto and Bitcoin payment services were quite critical of digital assets, however, now they are acting as the layer-2 solutions for crypto adoption and usage. Bitcoin price is already reacting to the news and has passed $59k at the time of reporting.
The stock to flow (S2F) model for Bitcoin predicts BTC price is still in the 2013-2017 phase and may soon cross $100k confidently.
