PayPal customers’ crypto assets are worth about $1B in total. According to PayPal’s latest quarterly earnings report submitted to the SEC, the global payments giant holds $943M worth of crypto assets, including $499M worth of Bitcoin, $362M worth of Ethereum, and $82M worth of Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.
PayPal allows its customers to buy, hold, sell, transfer, and use sale proceeds at checkout. However, PayPal does not actually hold its customers’ crypto assets. The company cooperates with custody service providers for the safekeeping of these assets. PayPal states that its customers’ crypto assets are kept in an account created on behalf of PayPal.
PayPal expands its crypto transfer service with Venmo
At Consensus 2023, PayPal announced that it will roll out its cryptocurrency transfer service to more than 60 million Venmo customers. Thanks to PayPal’s new Venmo feature, users will be able to send cryptocurrencies to external wallets as well as to all Venmo and PayPal users. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash are the four cryptocurrencies that Venmo accepts.
PayPal first allowed users to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies in the U.S. and then expanded to the U.K. in 2021. In May last year, PayPal Vice President Richard Nash hinted that he owned cryptocurrencies due to his position. Nash said, “We have a lot of things that I’m working on at PayPal. I like to experience services myself, so I think that’s natural.”
In Dec. 2022, PayPal announced that it would expand its cryptocurrency trading service to Luxembourg. In summary, the statement from PayPal was as follows:
“Luxembourg is a country known for its strong focus on innovation and is one of the world’s leading financial centers, and we are pleased to announce that we will be expanding PayPal’s cryptocurrency services to eligible Luxembourgish customers in the coming days. The introduction of this service offers Luxembourgish customers a new way to explore cryptocurrency in the PayPal environment they know and trust and provides customers access to educational content to help answer commonly asked questions and better understand the opportunities and risks associated with cryptocurrencies. Once available, eligible customers will be able to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash in their PayPal accounts via the website or the mobile app… Customers can start by buying as little as €1 of cryptocurrency through PayPal…”
