PayPal launches its own stablecoin PYUSD
The PayPal payment platform has announced the launch of its own stablecoin, the PYUSD stablecoin, for transfers between users and payments for goods. According to Bloomberg, the coin is pegged to the dollar at a one-to-one ratio, fully backed by dollar deposits, short-term Treasury bonds, and similar cash equivalents.
PYUSD is designed in such a way that it can be exchanged for dollars or other cryptocurrencies available on PayPal at any time. In addition, stablecoin can be used to pay for purchases and will soon be available in the PayPal Venmo payment application. Users will be able to transfer their tokens between PayPal and Venmo wallets. PYUSD will also be able to be transferred to compatible third-party wallets outside the PayPal network.
The new coin will initially be available only to PayPal customers in the United States. Nevertheless, the company hopes that over time, stablecoin will become part of the overall payment infrastructure.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman noted that with PYUSD, the company aims to strengthen its dominance in digital payments by relying on technology that provides instant and cheap transfers without a central intermediary.
Initially, PayPal expects PYUSD to be used mainly in the cryptocurrency and web3 sectors, for example, for trading other digital tokens and in-game payments, and then gradually introduced in areas such as money transfers and micropayments.
The company also promises to publish monthly reports with detailed information about the assets that support PYUSD starting in September.
PayPal shares have fallen 33% over the past 12 months, becoming the sixth worst performer on the Nasdaq 100 Index, as the pandemic-era surge in online payments has waned.
Earlier, PayPal allowed the withdrawal of cryptocurrencies to external wallets. The company has announced new services, including the ability to withdraw bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), litecoin (LTC), and fork (algorithm update) of Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
