Payments giant PayPal will likely debut its crypto buying and selling services to UK customers by next month, according to president and CEO Dan Schulman. The development comes within seven months after the company first launched the crypto service and will see the UK become one of the first jurisdictions outside the U.S. to have access to it.
Dan Schulman revealed the impending expansion during the company’s Q2 earnings call on Wednesday, telling listeners that the company is working on a banking integration that will allow it to offer both ACH and faster payments to customers. At this time, PayPal allows users to buy as much as $100,000 worth of cryptocurrencies per week, and will probably hope to provide such high limits to UK customers.
As soon as the integrations are complete, “We're going to launch, hopefully, maybe even next month in the U.K., open up trading there,” Schulman said.
He also revealed other features that customers can expect on the PayPal crypto service soon. Top of the list includes allowing users to withdraw funds from the platform to third-party wallets.
The current offering is basically an IOU (a document that acknowledges the existence of debt) where users can only buy and sell crypto assets, but not move them outside of PayPal. This approach has been kicked against by the crypto community, as it goes against the principle of users staying in full control of their funds at all times.
Meanwhile, PayPal says it is also working to provide a “seamless process for taxes and tax reporting,” another bottleneck that crypto investors face.
The CEO further disclosed what PayPal is working on beyond allowing customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. The company is with regulators and central banks around the world on various central bank digital currency (CBDC) projects, with the objective of bringing “in more citizens, more underbanked, underserved citizens into the financial system.”
PayPal is also looking at smart contracts, digitisation of assets, and “some interesting DeFi applications,” all of which could be integrated into the company’s crypto offerings in the near future.
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