“Offering more tokens on PayPal and Venmo provides users with greater flexibility, choice, and access to digital currencies,” she added. “This allows for more options to buy, send, or spend within our trusted PayPal and Venmo wallets.”
Access to Chainlink and Solana purchases will roll out to users in-app “over the next few weeks.”
PayPal began allowing users to buy, sell, or hold Bitcoin and Ethereum directly in 2020 and has since made moves to advance its crypto product offering, later expanding capabilities to its popular Venmo mobile payments app.
Since that time, the firm has gradually expanded its crypto footprint, launching its own dollar-pegged stablecoin ($PYUSD) on Ethereum in 2023 before expanding it to Solana.
In September 2024, business account owners were granted the ability to buy, sell, and hold assets directly via their accounts, piggybacking on a trend of businesses and institutions cozying up to the largest crypto assets. That announcement was preceded by a feature addition that allowed users to send crypto via PayPal and Venmo using the Ethereum Name Service (ENS).
More recently, the company teamed with crypto payments platform MoonPay, allowing users of Venmo to utilize their balance, bank, or debit card to purchase any cryptocurrency via MoonPay’s payment rails. The same feature was added in PayPal as early as May 2024.
PayPal recently stated a goal of having 20 million merchants using its $PYUSD stablecoin by the end of 2025. Around the time of that announcement, shares in the company were trading around $77, but its PYPL stock has slid to $58.47 at the time of writing, marking a loss of around 32% year-to-date.
Solana and Chainlink are both up in the last 24 hours, gaining 5.2% and 1.4% respectively.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
decrypt.co
