PayPal and Venmo will launch a joint service for buying and selling cryptocurrencies. This will happen in the next three months, sources familiar with the project say.
The payment giant PayPal, together with its subsidiary Venmo, will allow its users, whose number recently reached more than 320 million, to directly buy and sell some cryptocurrencies, CoinDesk reports referring to three sources in the crypto industry. It is still unknown what cryptocurrencies will be supported by the service.
“They are going to have some sort of a built-in wallet functionality so you can store it there,” one of the sources said, adding that he expects the company to “work with multiple exchanges to source liquidity..”
Another source noted that PayPal plans to deploy its crypto service “in the next three months, perhaps earlier.” PayPal declined to comment on the rumors. Both Coinbase and Bitstamp declined to comment.
Until recently, PayPal's position regarding cryptocurrencies was mixed. The payment giant repeatedly stated its interest in blockchain technology but was cautious about cryptocurrencies.
“We have teams clearly working on blockchain and cryptocurrency as well, and we want to take part in that in whatever form that takes in the future — I just think it’s a little early on right now [for bitcoin],” PayPal CFO John Rainey said in an interview with Yahoo Finance.
PayPal users complained about blocking transactions related to p2p purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies.
PayPal was one of the first companies to leave the Libra Association involved in the creation of Facebook's cryptocurrency Libra.