PayPal to Allow Exchange of Cryptos with External Wallets

On Tuesday, PayPal (Nasdaq: PYPL), a major global payments platform, announced that the company will support the native transfer of digital assets between PayPal and external wallets and exchanges.

According to the press release, the feature is available to select US users starting today and will be rolled out to all eligible US customers ‘in the coming weeks’. With the brand-new feature, PayPal customers could move cryptocurrencies from PayPal to external crypto addresses, including exchanges and hardware wallets, and send cryptos to family and friends on PayPal with no fees or network charges to send or receive.

“We’re excited to connect PayPal’s customers to other wallets, exchanges and applications, and we will continue to roll out additional crypto features, products and services in the months ahead. We look forward to hearing more customer and community feedback as we enhance our digital currency capabilities,” Jose Fernandez da Ponte, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Blockchain, Crypto & Digital Currencies at PayPal, commented.

In late September, the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) granted PayPal a full Bitlicense, making PayPal the first company to convert a conditional Bitlicense into a full Bitlicense.

PayPal’s first-quarter revenue for 2022, between January and March, was $6.48 billion. This was a year-over-year increase of 8%, which was above market expectations. However, it lost 32% in operating income, dropping to $711 million. The company reported a net income of $509 million with $0.43 earnings per share, which is down 53%. Earnings per share decreased by 28% on an adjusted basis to $0.88.

Furthermore, the platform experienced a solid year-over-year growth in payment volumes. During the first three months of the year, it processed $323 billion worth of payments, which is an increase of 15% compared to last year. PayPal said the rise in inflation and the conflict in Ukraine might hurt the volumes of transactions on its platform. In fact, the growth rate of transactions slowed considerably last quarter.