PayPal Activates Stablecoin-to-Fiat Option for International Currency Payments

Payments company PayPal announced today that its US customers can now use stablecoins to fund international payments.

In a press release Thursday, the company explained that customers can now convert PayPal USD (PYUSD) to dollars and then send money to “recipients in approximately 160 countries” through the Xoom payments platform without fees.

PayPal’s PYUSD is a virtual token that runs on Ethereum. It is also a dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by cash equivalents and short-term government bonds. PayPal launched PYUSD last year and Paxos Trust Co. issued the token.

Jose Fernandez da Ponte, SVP of PayPal’s Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Digital Currency Group, said the move “builds on our goal to drive mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies.”

“When we decided to bring PayPal USD to market, we had two goals we wanted to achieve: create a product with stable value that would maximize user trust, and ensure usability for commerce and payments,” he said. added.

Stablecoins are digital assets pegged to something stable, in this case the US dollar. These tokens do not fluctuate in value as much as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

In the cryptocurrency world, it is mainly used to close transactions when people do not have immediate access to fiat currency held in traditional banks, accelerating the trading experience.

PayPal launched a stablecoin last year with the hope that it would become “part of the overall payments infrastructure.”

It is smaller than other stablecoins in the cryptocurrency world, such as Tether’s USDT, the most traded digital asset and the third largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of $106 billion.

In comparison, PYUSD’s market capitalization is $109. million.

PayPal allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on platforms including Bitcoin and Ethereum and transfer them to external wallets.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.