PayPal Adds Cryptocurrency Withdrawals and Deposits

PayPal has announced that its customers can now move cryptocurrency to and from their personal wallets.

PayPal Enables Crypto Withdrawals, Deposits

PayPal said in a newsroom announcement that beginning today, June 7, it will support “the native transfer of cryptocurrencies between PayPal and other wallets and exchanges.”

It noted that the feature is “consistently ranked by users as one of the most requested enhancements” to its cryptocurrency services.

The new option allows users to withdraw cryptocurrency to crypto addresses, third-party exchanges, and hardware wallets. Additionally, the new feature allows users to deposit crypto into their PayPal account and send crypto to friends and family.

Those capabilities apply to PayPal’s supported assets: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC).

The feature will initially be available to select users in the United States and will be extended to all U.S. customers in future weeks.

Small Steps Toward Full Crypto Support

PayPal began offering a crypto trading feature in October 2020, but initially gave users few options beyond exchanging different coins. Those limitations attracted widespread criticism.

The company later allowed users to spend their cryptocurrency with PayPal-accepting merchants starting in March 2021. However, the introduction of commercial payments did not provide a way for users to withdraw funds to a personal wallet.

Personal crypto withdrawals were nevertheless expected eventually. The feature has been planned for at least a year now, as PayPal executives have discussed its addition since May 2021.

Other retail financial services have taken a similarly gradual approach toward fully supporting cryptocurrency. Robinhood, notably, did not begin offering crypto withdrawals until this year despite the fact that it has supported crypto trading since 2018.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies.