PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) is seeing PYPL stock soar higher on Wednesday after announcing some bitcoin news.
A PayPal news release reveals that the company is going to start allowing users to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies on its platform. The company notes that this will include several major currencies, such as bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, and litecoin.
According to PayPal, it will start offering these features to users in the U.S. in the coming weeks. The company also has plans to expand this to other areas of the world in the first half of 2021.
To go along with the buying, selling, and storing of cryptocurrencies, PayPal also plans to allow customers to use it for transactions at the 26 million merchants that it serves. The company believes this will help further the adoption of cryptocurrencies.
Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, said this about the news boosting PYPL stock today.
“Our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange. We are eager to work with central banks and regulators around the world to offer our support, and to meaningfully contribute to shaping the role that digital currencies will play in the future of global finance and commerce.”
PayPal also notes that it received a Bitlicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services. This is a first-of-its-kind license that allows the company to work with authorized virtual currency firms in the state.
PYPL stock was up 4.8% as of noon Wednesday.
On the date of publication, William White did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
