All eligible PayPal account holders in the U.S. can now buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency, the company announced Thursday. The firm also increased the amount of crypto that users can purchase in a week.
PayPal confirmed its crypto plans in a Oct. 21 announcement that sent shockwaves across the industry.
During the firm’s most recent earnings call on Nov. 2, CEO Dan Schulman said only 10% of PayPal customers in the U.S. had access to the crypto service at the time.
Citing steep demand, the publicly traded payments giant upped its weekly crypto purchase limits from $10,000 to $15,000 at the time and said remaining U.S. customers would get access to crypto in the next two to three weeks. By acting so quickly and raising the purchase limit yet again, PayPal is clearly finding a warm reception for its crypto offerings.
“Due to initial demand from our customers, we’ve also increased our weekly cryptocurrency purchase limit from $10K/week to $20K/week,” PayPal spokesman Aaron Gould said Thursday.
Plans to bring crypto services to Venmo and international customers in the first half of 2021 remain unchanged, Gould said. The service comes by way of a partnership with Paxos, a registered fintech firm based in New York that will handle all crypto custody on PayPal’s behalf.
PayPal’s crypto service initially supports bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin – but only with limited functionality. Some have criticized the firm for its restrictive approach.
According to PayPal’s cryptocurrency terms and conditions: “You currently are NOT able to send Crypto Assets to family or friends, use Crypto Assets to pay for goods or services, or withdraw Crypto Assets from your Cryptocurrencies Hub to an external cryptocurrency wallet.”
The price of bitcoin has risen 32.54% from Oct. 21, the date of PayPal’s announcement, to Nov. 11, according to CoinDesk data.