Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
PayPal Holdings Inc. has made another move in its efforts to leverage its Xoom cross-border payments platform for its stablecoin, PYUSD. The payments giant early Tuesday said Xoom users will be able to use PYUSD to settle money transfers they make through the service.
The news comes just seven months after PayPal announced users could convert their PYUSD to U.S. currency for transfers to other parties. With the latest move, PayPal will be able to process settlement transactions outside of usual banking hours, while users can rely on the speed of blockchain technology, the company says.
The new service relies on disbursement partners, and for this role PayPal has signed up the firms Cebuana Lhuillier, based in the Philippines, and Yellow Card, which operates in Africa. PayPal calls these “forthcoming integrations,” with no current estimate for a live date. More are to come, according to PayPal, which paid $1.09 billion to acquire Xoom in 2015.
Stablecoins lend themselves well to digital money transfers, as they are designed to remain tied to a national currency, such as the dollar. In this way, they avoid the daily swings in value most blockchain currencies are subject to. The largest stablecoin is Tether, with a market capitalization of $128.2 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.com. PYUSD by contrast claims a market cap of $519 million as of early Tuesday.
By contrast, the biggest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has been on a wild ride in recent days, reaching a price just shy of $92,000 early Tuesday. It started the year a little over $40,000.
