PayPal

PayPal is one of the largest electronic cash transmitting services in the world. At the end of 2019, PayPal had 309 million active account holders, rising to 375 million by February 2021.
== PayPal and cryptocurrencies ==
In December 2018, Coinbase announced that it was adding the ability for customers to link their PayPal accounts with their Coinbase accounts, allowing them to pay for cryptocurrency with fiat currency or store fiat in their PayPal accounts earned from cryptocurrency trades. In February 2019, Coinbase extended this service to European users, specifically those in countries that are members of the European Union (EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
PayPal was long rumored to be interested in getting involved in cryptocurrencies when it said it would join the Libra Association in June 2019. It later said that it was dropping out of the association in October of that year. 
The company formally signaled its interest in a comment letter on cryptocurrency regulation to the European Union in March 2020.
BitFlyer Europe announced on September 21, 2020 that it had integrated euro payments with PayPal, which is a dominant operator in the European payments space.
In October 2020, PayPal announced that it and eventually Venmo would begin offering buying and selling services for cryptocurrency starting in 2021. PayPal had gained a conditional bitlicense from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) contingent on its collaboration with Paxos, which will be responsible for ensuring the regulatory compliance of the new service, using Paxos' technological assets to facilitate payments, providing liquidity, and managing private keys for PayPal customers' wallets. Purchases and sales of crytpocurrencies are conducted on Paxos's ItBit trading platform. This service was later extended to users in the United Kingdom. The company hopes that moving into new assets would encourage regulators, corporations, and banks would encourage the continued adoption of digital currency in global markets. This would see PayPal continue to rival other international crypto trading companies and startups.
Bloomberg reported later in October that PayPal was in talks to acquire BitGo Inc., a South Dakota-registered cryptocurrency custodian. Talks ended without a sale in December 2020.
CEO Dan Schulman noted there is growing global interest in CBDCs (Central bank digital currencies) and in digital walletsTelling analysts during the company's third quarter 2020 earnings call on November 2, 2020. He said he views cryptocurrencies as cheaper and more efficient to use than the current predominant ACH (Automated Clearing House)-based systems.
Amid the general market turbulence of early January 2021 PayPal saw $242 million in cryptocurrency sales on January 11, a daily record level for the company, according to online data aggregator Nomics. 
The rapidly growing digital payments provider said on March 8, 2021 that it had agreed to purchase Curv. Curv is a digital assets custody and security firm that provides a cloud-based wallet which is fully software driven; that is, with Curv there is no need for hot or cold wallets. The price and other terms of the transaction were not provided. 
On Monday, August 7, PayPal announced it had launched a dollar-denominated stablecoin called PayPal USD, marking a further expansion into its services for digital currencies.
== Key People ==
*Elon Musk, co-founder
*Peter Thiel, co-founder
*Dan Schulman, CEO
== References ==
Category:Payments
Category:Cryptocurrency
Category:CryptoMarketsWiki