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PayPal to Reportedly Support Cryptocurrency Direct Transactions
Online-payments giant PayPal Holdings is looking to explicitly unleash cryptocurrencies onto its client base that reportedly boasts over 320 million people.
According to a report by CoinDesk, three sources have confirmed to the crypto industry publication that PayPal and its affiliated platform Venmo will allow their users to “directly” buy and sell several cryptocurrencies, though which coins they will support are yet to be revealed.
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“They are going to have some sort of a built-in wallet functionality so you can store it there,” one source said, adding that he expects the company “would be working with multiple exchanges to source liquidity.”
While PayPal declined to comment on the rumors, another source told CoinDesk that PayPal plans to roll out its crypto offering “in the next three months, maybe sooner.”
PayPal’s recent hiring push supports the claim that it is moving into crypto.
The global payments platform’s job listings, posted on PayPal’s own boards, include a request for a technical lead/cryptocurrency engineer set to join a team in Chennai, India, ZDNet reported.
A successful applicant would become part of PayPal’s “Crypto Engineering Team” in the region, which the company says is “responsible for new initiatives for PayPal global with focus on agility, time to market and innovation.” This includes the development of crypto-related products and features that are suitable for the PayPal platform.
The listing emphasizes the need for someone able to build and maintain Internet applications and services, with a focus on expertise in security, symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, crypto libraries, and software development.
Around the start of 2020, PayPal posted job openings to ramp up its new Blockchain Research Group. PayPal posted eight engineering positions: four in San Jose and four in Singapore.
Following PayPal’s short-lived dalliance with the Facebook-led Libra project last year, the focus now is expanding its own payments expertise, one of the sources added.
In an interview with CoinDesk earlier this year, PayPal Chief Technology Officer Sri Shivananda said the company wanted its own “perspective and view on [blockchain] technology itself to see how it can help us contribute to the concept of creating an open digital payments platform that can serve everyone.”
Shivananda said he was unable to comment on any of PayPal’s specific plans.
“We are a strong believer in the potential of blockchain. The digitization of currency is only a matter of when not if,” Shivananda said.
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