PayPal has confirmed plans to launch its own stablecoin, which is in development. The announcement was made after developer Steve Moser disclosed that he had found evidence (in an iPhone application) that the company was building its digital currency.
According to him, who shared the discovery with Bloomberg, the code indicates that the currency would be backed by the US dollar.
PayPal customers already make transactions in crypto
This is not the company’s first initiative in the cryptoasset market. Last year, it had already announced the permission for transactions with cryptocurrencies for users in the United States (in March) and the United Kingdom (in August).
At the time, PayPal disclosed its belief that cryptocurrencies could be a “legitimate funding source to conduct real-world transactions in millions of trades”.
A year earlier, in 2020, PayPal also started allowing users to transact with cryptocurrencies and created the “Checkout With Crypto” feature to pay merchants. Around the same time, the company partnered with Paxos, a fintech that issues the stablecoin Dollar PAX (USDP).
Now the goal of PayPal, which has 300 million customers worldwide and a market value of US$ 220 billion, is to create a stablecoin specifically for payments. However, the company’s senior vice president of cryptocurrencies and digital currencies, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, told Bloomberg News that before moving forward with the project, it will need to “work closely with relevant regulators”.
