PayPal customers will pay with cryptocurrency in stores, while Visa will process payments in USDC stablecoin
PayPal users will be able to pay with cryptocurrency at 29 million points of sale
In the near future, PayPal customers will be able to pay for their purchases at 29 million retail outlets using cryptocurrency. For purchases, one will be able to use BTC, ETH, as well as Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. At the time of payment, PayPal users will be able to convert crypto coins to fiat.
“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,” said CEO of the company Dan Shulman.
PayPal has no plans to charge a transaction fee when placing an order using digital currencies. Only one type of cryptocurrency can be selected for each purchase.
Cryptanalyst: Selling BTC now is crazy
Well-known crypto enthusiast and analyst Willy Woo believes that now it’s not a good time to sell bitcoins. He is confident that this year will be a year of “insane optimism” for BTC, as the current rally is in its “final explosive phase.”
“You’d be crazy to sell right now. There’s more buying the dip than ever seen before, a new record for 2021 and we know the person that’s buying the dip is Rick Astley and he’s not going to let us down,” Woo said jokingly.
He also stated that the cryptocurrency is currently “at the bottom”, so Woo is “building up his long positions.”
The total volume of stablecoins held on crypto-exchanges has exceeded $10 billion
For the first time, the total volume of stablecoins that are stored on cryptocurrency platforms turned out to be above the $10 billion mark. Such data as of March 28 is given by CryptoQuant.
According to CoinGecko, the total trading volume of stablecoins has reached $90.6 billion, and the market capitalization is $62.9 billion. Accordingly, about 16% of all issued coins are stored on crypto exchanges.
Earlier, the head of the US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell called stablecoins an improved version of cryptocurrencies” because they are tied to fiat, which is a guarantee of their relative reliability.
Visa will process payments in USDC stablecoin
Visa payment system has launched a pilot program in collaboration with cryptocurrency company Crypto.com. According to the company, the pilot program will allow USD Coin (USDC) to be sent directly to Visa Ethereum addresses. Anchorage digital bank will become Visa’s settlement agent when working with USDC.
The company has taken the development of this direction seriously. In December last year, Visa already connected its global network to USDC and announced the release of a card with support for payments in stablecoin. In February, the company began testing a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that will allow traditional bank customers to buy and sell digital assets.
“We see increasing demand from consumers across the world to be able to access, hold and use digital currencies and we’re seeing demand from our clients to be able to build products that provide that access for consumers,” Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, said.
In the future, Visa plans to process payments in central bank digital currencies (CBDC). Visa CEO Alfred Kelly said earlier this month that the company aims to reach out to stablecoins as well as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
“We’re trying to do two things. One is to enable the purchase of Bitcoin on Visa credentials. And secondly, working with Bitcoin wallets to allow the Bitcoin to be translated into a fiat currency and therefore immediately be able to be used at any of the 70 million places around the world where Visa is accepted,“ Kelly said.
The new program at Visa is described as a “small step” for the payment platform, but “a giant leap” for the proliferation of digital assets.
