Global payment giant PayPal has announced that all United States users will be able to facilitate money transfers to friends and family abroad using USD converted from the PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin.
PYUSD is, however, not available to residents of Hawaii.
PayPal said that US customers leveraging its cross-border payments platform, Xoom, will be able to convert PYUSD to USD and then send money to recipients in approximately 160 countries.
No transaction fees will be charged, according to the official statement on April 4th.
Commenting on the latest development, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, Senior Vice President of the Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Digital Currency Group, PayPal, said,
“When we decided to bring PayPal USD to market, we had two objectives we wanted to achieve: create something that had a stable value to maximize user confidence and ensure it had utility for commerce and payments. Enabling U.S. users of Xoom the option to fund cross-border money transfers using PYUSD builds on our goal of driving mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies while also offering an easy way to securely send money to friends and family at a lower cost.”
The stablecoin market appears to be heating up. While Tether’s USDT and Circle-backed USDC remained the top stablecoins in the world, several alternatives have sprung up to compete for the market share.
Blockchain company Ripple also announced plans to roll out a USD-pegged stablecoin that is slated for some time “later this year.”
PayPal launched its dollar-backed stablecoin, PYUSD on Ethereum blockchain in August 2023, in collaboration with Paxos. The fintech firm had then said that the main aim was to remove friction for in-experience payments in virtual environments by allowing cost-effective and cheaper transfers of value, sending remittances, or carrying out international payments.
Prominent individuals in the crypto industry welcomed the “bold” move amidst regulatory uncertainty in the US.
Several prominent crypto exchanges such as Huobi, Kraken, Crypto.com, and Coinbase announced listing for PYUSD the very same month. The stablecoin launched on Venmo as well. Subsequently, Crypto.com unveiled a partnership with PayPal to become the preferred exchange for PYUSD.
In November, PayPal admitted to receiving a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its stablecoin.