PayPal is launching its own stablecoin: PayPal USD (PYUSD). The company says the cryptocurrency token is “fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits” and can be bought or sold on PayPal’s app or website at $1.00 per PYUSD. With the coin, you can make person-to-person payments, fund purchases with the currency at checkouts, and transfer PYUSD between PayPal and other outside wallets. PayPal says that you can also convert the currencies supported by PayPal to and from PYUSD as well.
Stablecoins take their name from the fact that they’re centralized and backed by existing government-supported currencies like the US dollar or the Euro. The US government is still hashing out
how to regulate stablecoin and other forms of cryptocurrency. After all, stablecoins aren’t always that
stable, as we saw with the collapse of Tether and TerraUSD. PYUSD is launching today and will become available “in the coming weeks” to customers in the US with PayPal Balance accounts. It’ll also be available on the PayPal-owned Venmo app “soon.”
