PayPal plans to launch its own stablecoin

On January 8, 2022, an iOS developer named Steve Moser posted on Twitter that PayPal is working on a stablecoin called PayPal Coin after he found the logo on the electronic commerce company’s iOS app. Bloomberg quickly interviewed PayPal’s Senior Vice President of Crypto and Digital Currencies, Jose Fernandez da Ponte who confirmed that PayPal is indeed working on launching a stablecoin. 

da Ponte told Bloomberg on January 8 that PayPal had been exploring the possibilities of stablecoins. As to when PayPal would act on the launch of their stablecoin, da Ponte only said that ‘If and when we seek to move forward, we will, of course, work closely with relevant regulators.’

On the same day, another spokesperson from PayPal later shared with Bloomberg that the code that Moser found about the stablecoin resulted in a hackathon, which caused PayPal to announce that the code is not yet final.

According to an article published by the American Banker on January 11, PayPal’s initiative to launch its own stablecoin is a response to the approaching launch of the Facebook-affiliated stablecoin called Diem. 

Christina Crone, PayPal’s lead engagement manager, informed American Banker that ‘Stablecoins offer yet another new business model for making money with cryptocurrency and would give PayPal an advantage for processing within its own infrastructure since stablecoins can be paired with other products and services that would help generate revenues through different financial super apps.’

In the same article from American Banker, Tim Sloane, the Vice President of Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group in Concord, Massachusetts said that Paypal is better positioned than other high-tech companies since it had already built an acceptance network with the users. 

Other than the confirmation made in the Bloomberg report, PayPal still hasn’t shared more information about the launch of their stablecoin.    

PayPal’s effort to extend its reach into the crypto market started in late 2020 when the company started to facilitate the purchase of multiple cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. In 2021, the company even added the Checkout with Crypto feature into their app, which allows users to purchase items using their digital tokens.