PayPal Is ‘Exploring’ Launching Its Own Stablecoin

PayPal has reportedly confirmed that it’s working on a stablecoin.

A developer named Steve Moser discovered references to something called “PayPal Coin” within PayPal’s iOS app. Bloomberg asked the company for more details, and PayPal senior vice president of crypto and digital currencies Jose Fernandez da Ponte confirmed Moser’s findings.

“We are exploring a stablecoin,” Fernandez da Ponte told Bloomberg, “if and when we seek to move forward, we will of course, work closely with relevant regulators.” But a company spokesperson said the code Moser found resulted from a hackathon, so it’s not considered final.

PayPal has slowly extended its reach into the crypto market over the last few years. It started to facilitate the purchase of select cryptocurrencies in late 2020, for example, and in March 2021 it added the “Checkout with Crypto” feature to let users buy things with their digital tokens.

The company’s existing support for cryptocurrencies is limited to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Moser says that PayPal’s app revealed that it’s working to support the Neo cryptocurrency, too, in addition to exploring the possibility of introducing its own stablecoin.

A stablecoin differs from other digital currencies in that its value is backed by a specific asset. A cryptocurrency like Bitcoin might be worth about $47,000 one week and roughly $42,000 the next; a stablecoin worth one gram of gold one week will still be worth one gram of gold the next.

Not that most stablecoins are backed by gold. Several, like USD Coin and Tether, are backed by the US dollar. Bloomberg reports that PayPal Coin would also be backed by the US dollar, which would make it easier for the average PayPal user to adopt the digital currency for everyday use.