PayPal Supporting Payments in BTC, LTC, ETH and BCH from 2021

As the value of one BTC edged towards $12000 earlier this week on the back of a bull market, analysts expected it to follow the familiar pattern. Rapid gains and then equally rapid losses. Over $12,000 is a peak that BTC just doesn’t seem comfortable at.

But the analysts were wrong. Not only did it break the 12K barrier, the king of crypto kept rising and is currently knocking on the door of 13k.

The reason? PayPal announced that it will start supporting cryptocurrency payments.

Photo: QuoteInspector

On Wednesday, October 21^st, the ewallet giant confirmed the rumours that had been circulating for the previous several months. From 2021 PayPal users will be able to use cryptocurrencies to make purchases at any of the 26 million merchants in its network.

It will also support altcoins Litecoin (LTC), Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

One of the largest payment providers in the world, Paypal has 346 million active accounts and processed $222 billion in volume in Q2 2020. This move will see it become a major player in crypto markets as well.

How It Will Work

PayPal’s new service will allow users to hold and exchange Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin with the company’s digital wallet. They will also be able to use their cryptos to shop in the vast network of merchants. Retailers will receive payments in fiat currencies.

US customers of the company will have access to crypto services within the next few weeks. But they won’t be able to pay for goods and services in cryptocurrency until early in 2021.

Users of Venmo, a PayPal subsidiary, and select international customers won’t receive access to crypto services until an unspecified date in the first half of 2021.

The move comes amid greater corporate adoption of cryptocurrencies. Square, a PayPal competitor has supported Bitcoin since 2018 with its Cash app. And also purchased $50 million worth of bitcoin earlier this month.

This is not the first time PayPal has tried to enter the crypto market. It was a founding member of Facebook’s Libra association but pulled out over regulatory and other concerns.

As PayPal CEO Dan Schulman explained in a statement “The shift to digital forms of currencies is inevitable, bringing with it clear advantages in terms of financial inclusion and access; efficiency, speed and resilience of the payments system; and the ability for governments to disburse funds to citizens quickly. Our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange.”

Source: Pop Tech

He went on to add that the inclusion of crypto services was a significant milestone on the road to mainstream cryptocurrency adoption. And it would seem that investors agreed. Bitcoin soared, but the price of all currencies to be supported also rose, just not as significantly.

However, not everybody in the cryptocurrency community is happy. For a start, PayPal will not allow the transfer of cryptos from other wallets. Users will have to purchase them on the company’s own exchange. This gives it a hugely unfair advantage over the competition.

BTC Community Concerns

Bitcoin purists are also worried about the amount of influence PayPal will now have. The idea behind the founding of bitcoin was to provide a decentralized currency that could be used by anyone.

PayPal has a reputation for being very controlling and prescriptive over the use of its services. This was illustrated last year when the company suddenly banned Pornhub’s top performers from receiving payments.

Whether these concerns are justified still remains to be seen. But one thing is certain, cryptos are coming into their own.