PayPal Has Big Plans For Crypto, But There’s a Problem

PayPal’s bullish move to add bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to its payment network was undoubtedly one of the many big news in the crypto industry this year.

In the meantime, PayPal users can only buy and sell bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, and litecoin. Still, they won’t be able to perform any internal or external transfer to other users. This will change soon as the payment company has bigger plans for crypto. 

PayPal Users Eager to Access Crypto

Revealing details about the development, PayPal CEO Daniel Schulman said that the new crypto service is currently available to just 10% of PayPal’s customers in Monday’s earnings call. But it will be available to all U.S. users in the coming weeks. 

Schulman said that PayPal’s bullishness towards crypto was fueled by the response it received from its crypto offering last month. The CEO noted that the waiting list’s size for access to the crypto service was three times greater than what the company expected. 

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Daniel Schulman also added that the leading payment processor plans to use cryptocurrencies as a shopping tool while also hoping to partner with central banks.

Crypto is Cheaper

He revealed that users would use their cryptocurrency balances to pay for goods and services at 28 million merchants using PayPal. The company will also add Venmo as a payment option. 

This feature will be available in the first half of next year. The CEO said using PayPal crypto accounts for shopping will not attract increased fees for consumers and merchants.

PayPal sees cryptocurrency as a cheaper and more efficient payment method than ACH’s existing banking payment network. The company believes using cryptocurrencies will benefit many low-income people since the conventional financial system is “not working.”

But There’s a Problem

Meanwhile, taxation is an obstacle to PayPal’s plan to promote crypto for day-to-day exchange. The U.S. taxman treats all crypto-related transactions as a taxable event. So PayPal’s users who use their crypto accounts for purchases could be forced to answer the IRS’s call. 

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Efforts to lobby Congress to create an exemption for small-dollar transactions from the IRS scrutiny have been unfruitful. How PayPal plans to handle this issue is still unclear. Schulman did not address it in the call.