Digital Assets
PayPal Expands its Crypto Offering to the UK
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It has been almost a year since online payments giant, PayPal (PYPL ), announced its intention to enter the crypto industry by allowing users to buy, hold, and sell digital currencies. Less than a month after the announcement, the company did roll out these features, but only to its US customers.
The rest of the world was promised access to the same features and possibilities, only a few months later. Those ‘few months’ turned into almost a full year, but the company is finally making good on its word, according to the new announcement.
PayPal to start offering crypto out of the UK as well
Earlier today, PayPal started this week with a blast by announcing that it is going to enable the same crypto services in the UK. In other words, users will be able to buy, hold, and sell crypto with PayPal in the UK as of this week.
Like in the US, there will be a handful of cryptos available, including BTC, BCH, ETH, and LTC. Users will be able to see and manage their coins via PayPal’s web version or mobile app, keep track of crypto prices in real-time, and even access educational content, if they are not sure what cryptos are, how they work, but also what opportunities and risks they carry.
The announcement is also important as it marks the first instance of PayPal’s crypto offering leaving US soil. And, given how widespread and trusted PayPal is, its crypto service expansion could easily start a new era of digital coins use and exploration becoming more mainstream in the UK.
Of course, there is also the potential to cause a sharp price surge, as many believe the original announcement from last year is what sparked the rally that took BTC past $64,000 per coin. At the time of writing, the coin is already at $50,000, and likely to go higher.
The importance of PayPal’s role in the crypto industry
The payments giant’s VP and General Manager of Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, said that the pandemic has also had a major impact on the speed at which crypto adoption has been going. People became dissatisfied with the way traditional currencies worked, and became more open to change and innovation, as it brought new opportunities.
Meanwhile, PayPal has a wide reach, a lot of knowledge of consumers and business, as well as rigorous security and compliance. All of this puts it in a unique position to help people accept and explore cryptocurrency. It will, of course, continue its work with the UK and other global regulators to ensure that its offering is regulatory compliant, and that there are no oversights from the legal point of view.
Besides, buying cryptos via PayPal does have a lot of advantages. Users can start buying as little as 1 GBP worth of crypto, and it is as easy to do as sending a regular payment within the service. Users will easily be able to see the four available coins, their current pricing and trends, and more.
They can also choose from pre-determined purchase amounts, or enter a custom amount. As always, they can fund their accounts via credit or debit cards, and purchased cryptos can be held within PayPal’s wallet at no additional charge. There are only transaction fees and crypto conversion fees for buying and selling that still apply.
Educating people and expanding the reach of crypto
As mentioned, PayPal’s goal is more than to simply offer cryptos. It also aims to help users understand the crypto industry and ecosystem, its volatility, risks, as well as opportunities, through a number of educative sources.
Once again, its global reach will play a huge part in helping people who were skeptical, or even unaware of the crypto industry, to understand it better and start using it. Given that cryptocurrencies are the next generation of money, and are clearly not going away, the best that can be done about them is to educate people about their use and potential. And, also due to the fact that it is one of the largest companies in the world to enter the crypto market to date, it will also help the crypto industry itself grow and reach new users, prices, and likely a greater inflow of funds.
