Fintech giant PayPal launched a new payment option on Monday that will let smaller U.S. merchants accept more than 100 cryptocurrencies, including mainstays like Bitcoin and Ethereum but also zanier options like Trump’s memecoin and even the novelty token Fartcoin. Any U.S. business using PayPal’s online payments processing platform can opt in, said a spokesperson.
PayPal will charge merchants a promotional fee of 0.99% on transactions for the first year and then up the charge to 1.5%, Frank Keller, an executive vice president, told Fortune. Those fees are less than the 1.57% average rate that U.S. businesses paid to credit card companies in 2024, according to the Nilson Report.
“There’s a worldview where you can imagine that the world is moving on chain,” said Keller, referring to putting data on blockchains. “Is that happening overnight? No. Some people say long time periods. Other people say very short time periods. I think we will see movement.”
To settle the transactions, PayPal will let users connect existing crypto wallets they own to a checkout page. Depending on a buyer’s crypto wallet, PayPal will sell the cryptocurrency on a centralized exchange like Coinbase or a decentralized exchange like Uniswap. The proceeds of that sale will be converted into PayPal’s own stablecoin, which will then be converted into U.S. dollars sent back to the merchant.
“Imagine a shopper in Guatemala buying a special gift from a merchant in Oklahoma City,” Alex Chriss, president and CEO of PayPal, said in a statement. “Using PayPal’s open platform, the business can accept crypto for payments.”
The move to let customers pay businesses with crypto is PayPal’s latest push into digital assets.
Among the Fortune 500, the fintech giant has been an early adopter of crypto. In 2020, PayPal said that U.S. users would be able to buy, sell, and hold a select group of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. It then expanded that capacity to Venmo.
But during the so-called crypto winter of 2022, PayPal ratcheted down its public rhetoric on crypto. Now, as crypto markets are soaring and President Donald Trump’s administration casts a favorable eye on digital assets, it’s charging ahead.
In September it let businesses buy, hold, and sell crypto from their merchant accounts. And its stablecoin PYUSD, which the company launched in 2023, has increased its market capitalization about 70% since the beginning of the year to about $850 million, according to CoinGecko.
PayPal plans to expand the ability for merchants to accept crypto to larger enterprise customers in the U.S. and globally, but a spokesperson declined to provide a timeline.
