PayPal has been expanding its cryptocurrency business since it opened trading to all users in 2020. It allowed US customers to check out with cryptocurrency and increased its crypto buy limit over the past year. In the future, it might also offer a stablecoin of its own. Jose Fernandez da Ponte, SVP of crypto and digital currencies at PayPal, has confirmed to Bloomberg that the online payment provider is “exploring a stablecoin.” He also said that the company will work closely with relevant regulators “if and when [it] seek[s] to move forward.”
A developer named Steve Moser found hidden code and images for a “PayPal Coin” in the company’s app and shared them with Bloomberg. Based on what he discovered, the PayPal Coin will be backed by the US dollar. It may also feature the PayPal logo with two horizontal slashes across it, though that may change upon the coin’s launch, if it does see the light of day. A spokesperson told the publication that the tidbits Moser unearthed in the app were leftovers from an internal hackathon by the company’s blockchain, crypto and digital currencies division.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies backed by fiat currencies and are typically more, well, stable than their decentralized counterparts. Meta (formerly Facebook) has big crypto plans, as well, and was supposed to launch a digital wallet that supports its own stablecoin called Diem. However, it faced pushback from regulators and launched the cryptocurrency wallet Novi with the stablecoin called the Pax Dollar instead.
