Paypal, the multimillion-dollar payment giant, announced the expansion of its cryptocurrency services to the U.K., starting this week. According to reports, Paypal will allow U.K. citizens to purchase, hold and sell digital currencies.
It is considered the first foray of PayPal’s crypto product, initially launched in the U.S. in October last year.
“It has been doing really well in the U.S.,” Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s general manager for blockchain, crypto and digital currencies, told CNBC. “We expect it’s going to do well in the U.K.”
Users can also track crypto prices in real-time and find educational content on the market.
Paypal will allow U.K. citizens to purchase four cryptocurrencies from its platform: bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum. Customers can start by buying as little as £1 of cryptocurrency.
In addition, Paypal also provides educational content to help know the cryptocurrency system, price volatility, risks, and opportunities related to purchasing and selling. The company encourages its customers to research the potential risks before taking the step to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency with PayPal.
Currently, PayPal is counting on Paxos, a New York-regulated digital currency company, to allow crypto exchange in the U.K market. The company has collaborated with relevant U.K. regulators to launch the service.
Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s general manager for blockchain, crypto, and digital currencies, stated:
“It has been doing really well in the U.S.; we expect it’s going to do well in the U.K.”
PayPal’s current crypto offering is similar to the UK-based firm Revolut. According to the company’s rules, Paypal users can’t move their crypto holdings outside the app. However, Revolut is now testing a feature that enables users to withdraw bitcoin out of their personal wallets.
PayPal aims at making the crypto exchange easier for people to participate in the market. The company also expanded crypto buying and selling to Venmo, its popular mobile wallet.
“The tokens and coins have been around for a while, but you had to be a relatively sophisticated user to be able to access that,” da Ponte said. “Having that on a platform like ours makes a really good entry point.”
While PayPal started with crypto trading, the company didn’t just limit itself to just that. The company is also changing its service strategy to offer cryptocurrency payment processing. On March 30, the company announced it had launched a new product called “Checkout With Crypto,” which enables crypto payments at millions of online stores.
“We definitely have ambitions to continue to expand the product range in the U.S., the U.K. and other markets,” da Ponte said.
“We are very deliberate about starting with initial functionality, and then we’ll see where the market is going to take us. Different markets have a different appetite for products.”
The launch of PayPal’s crypto service in the U.K. also arrives as regulators get more watchful of the rise in digital currencies. In June, the FCA banned the British subsidiary of Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, allude to a failure in meeting money-laundering needs.
“It makes sense that, as there is increased consumer interest and increased volume, the regulators are putting more attention into this space,” da Ponte said, adding that PayPal has built “strong regulatory relations.”
