On June 7, PayPal announced that cryptocurrency holders can now withdraw crypto assets from the payment platform to external wallets, a long-awaited feature that makes the company’s offer more attractive and takes away the competitive advantage of other popular services that have previously started offering this opportunity. The new feature will be rolled out gradually.
The ability to make external transfers on the PayPal crypto platform, which can be seen below, will begin to be provided to users today and will be available to everyone in the US within the next weeks or two.
As noted by decrypt.co, PayPal first launched its own cryptocurrency wallet at the end of 2020 and allowed users to buy, sell and store four popular crypto coins – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. But up to this point, PayPal did not allow the withdrawal of crypto assets to external software wallets, such as MetaMask, Coinbase, or hardware wallets.
The fact that users can now make external crypto transfers is significant, if only because PayPal owns the popular Venmo payment app. The latter is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world to transfer money, and merchants are increasingly using it as a payment platform.
It is also significant that PayPal does not abandon its ambitious plans for the cryptocurrency market, despite the financial downturn and, as a result, the fall in the value of the company’s shares, observed over the past few months.
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