PayPal’s U.S. dollar-pegged PYUSD stablecoin is moving beyond experimental status, the company said Tuesday.
The update was shared during the company’s investor day in New York, with execs from the payments tech firm touting ambitious plans for its future.
“The thesis was: Can we facilitate that on PYUSD rails so as not to have the currency conversion, the friction, as well as time?” Michelle Gill, general manager of PayPal’s small and medium enterprises line of business, said in an interview with Bloomberg.
First of those plans is PayPal’s initiative to offer PYUSD as an option for merchants to pay vendors through its bill-pay product. It’s not available yet, but is slated to make its debut this year. According to initial reporting from Bloomberg and Fortune, the approach would enable merchants to “invite” vendors into the PayPal network for transactions.
Cross-border payments represent another key focus for the initiative, which aims to address the needs of U.S. merchants when it comes to making payments for international vendors and suppliers. With this, PayPal said that the integration is aimed at reducing friction over currency conversion and hopefully reduce transaction times in the process.
Last year, the company completed its first PYUSD business transaction, just a year after it revealed plans for the stablecoin.
These moves come as stablecoin legislation in the U.S. appears to be gaining regulatory clarity, with observers noting that once the waters are clearer, thousands more will join the fray.
Aside from integration with existing lines of business, PayPal is also reportedly looking to expand its entire product suite, with plans to ramp up Hyperwallet, a business it acquired in 2018 for $400 million.
Hyperwallet facilitates mass payments to contractors, freelancers, and sellers globally, and PayPal wants to see PYUSD become a direct payment option on the platform by before the end of Q2.
PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said during yesterday’s event that while the company is still seen as “these pieces of either acquisitions or products or things that we’ve done over the past,” they are working on “actually bringing it together.”
In line with those promises, the company has set a target to grow its earnings 20% by 2027.
At press time, PayPal, which trades on the Nasdaq under the PYPL ticker, had reached $77.57 during pre-market trading, up 4.7% from Tuesday’s close at $74.07.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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Source: https://decrypt.co/307798/paypal-pyusd-stablecoin-20-million-merchants
