Payment service provider wants to accelerate adoption of stablecoins

PayPal plans to integrate its stablecoin, PYUSD, into more of its products this year. The goal is to fully support merchants' needs through a single platform.

The international payment service provider plans to offer PYUSD as a payment option to more than 20 million small and medium-sized businesses. Merchants could invite their suppliers to join the PayPal network, which should facilitate transactions. This told Michelle Gill, general manager of PayPal's small business and financial services division.

"Many of the payments we expect will be cross-border, as U.S. merchants seek to pay suppliers and vendors abroad," Gill said in an interview with Bloomberg during PayPal's investor day. "The question was: can we enable this through PYUSD so we can avoid currency conversions, friction and delays?"

In addition, PayPal plans to add PYUSD as a payment option for global transactions through Hyperwallet. This platform helps companies process bulk payments to freelancers, contractors and vendors around the world.

PayPal acquired Hyperwallet in 2018 for $400 million and plans to make PYUSD payments operational in the first half of this year. In addition, the company will allow merchants to handle PayPal payments via checkout in cryptocurrency by the end of 2025.

"We've been talking about blockchain for a decade, but this technology doesn't really become concrete until you can actually spend it," explained PayPal CEO Alex Chriss. "And that's exactly what we want to make possible."

In the summer of 2024, PYUSD reached a market capitalization of more than a billion dollars. But after this peak, the stablecoin grew at a slower pace.