PayPal Enables U.S. Business Accounts to Buy, Hold and Sell Crypto

The service won’t be available to New York state businesses in the beginning.

PayPal (PYPL) will let its business clients buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency directly from their accounts in the U.S., potentially opening up a larger market for the payments giant.

After letting its retail users do the same via PayPal and Venmo accounts for several years now, the company also saw demand from business owners to buy, hold, and sell crypto, the company said Wednesday.

“Business owners have increasingly expressed a desire for the same cryptocurrency capabilities available to consumers,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, senior vice president of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and digital currencies at PayPal in a statement.

The payments company will also allow U.S. merchants to externally transfer cryptocurrency on-chain to “eligible” third-party wallets, according to the statement.

To start, the service will be unavailable to business clients in New York State, the company said, without giving a timetable for when that would change. The company is one of the 20 or so recipients of the Empire State’s notoriously stringent Bit License. It also has a trust license from the state’s Department of Financial Services.

Since 2020, PayPal has allowed consumers to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies directly from their accounts. Last year, it unveiled its U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), which reached a $1 billion market cap this summer.

By: Aoyon Ashraf / Bitcoin Magazine