American multinational financial technology company PayPal has announced a new peer-to-peer (P2P) feature called "Links," which makes it possible for users to transfer money with the help of a one-time link.
The new feature allows dropping the link into any conversation (text, DM and so on).
Notably, PayPal's press release has stressed that digital assets will be added to the same P2P flow. The list of supported digital assets will include Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and PayPal USD (PYUSD).
The new P2P feature will initially be available in the U.S., but it will later be extended to a slew of other countries.
In July, the company also introduced PayPal World, a global platform that is meant to connect various payment systems in order to enable seamless cross-border commerce.
PayPal's crypto integration history
PayPal was originally introduced for buying, holding and selling Bitcoin and several altcoins. The move helped to ignite a full-blown crypto rally back then. It initially made its crypto entry in the U.S. and later expanded the new feature worldwide.
In 2021, it launched the "Checkout with Crypto" feature that makes it possible for merchants to accept crypto from customers. It also introduced crypto in the Venmo app in the same year.
In 2022, PayPal allowed making crypto transfers to external wallets. The following year, the company rolled out its highly regulated PYUSD stablecoin. The stablecoin product currently has a market cap of roughly $1.3 billion, according to CoinGecko data.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team