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Paypal is reportedly planning to expand its crypto services to U.K. users of the platform. The move is part of the payments giant’s plans to roll out the cryptocurrency functionality to international markets.
U.K. users will soon be able to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in the coming months, according to Bitcoin.com. Paypal executive chief strategy and growth officer Jonathan Auerbach revealed that the firm plans to deploy its crypto services in the region during the recent Investor Day 2021 event.
The move is part of Paypal’s thrust to expand the popular crypto services to its international customers. The crypto product, which first launched for U.S. users last year, proved to be very popular with customers that it has surpassed the company’s expectations.
“We’re actually looking at our crypto services to help position Paypal, to help shape the role of cryptocurrencies and CBDCs in consumer payments, commerce, and financial services safely and securely,” Auerbach said. He also added that although “so early days for us here, but we’re moving rapidly.”
After months of speculations, Paypal officially confirmed its crypto product in October 2020. The new service allows users to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies supported by the platform such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Lite Coin (LTC). However, the service was initially available only for U.S. customers.
Paypal started rolling out the crypto feature by November, which quickly became a hit with the platform’s users. “We’ve only rolled this out to 10% of our base,” Paypal CEO Dan Schulman said. “We did that a couple of days ago. But our waiting list is 2 to 3 times what our expectations were.”
During the Investor’s Day event, Paypal also announced that the crypto feature will be available to Venmo users in the first semester of 2021. Venmo is a payment app that Paypal acquired in 2014.
Paypal previously announced plans of putting up a crypto business unit this quarter. “We are significantly investing in our new crypto, blockchain, and digital currencies business unit in order to help shape this more inclusive future,” Schulman explained.
