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PayPal adds stablecoin to Solana blockchain
PayPal says its stablecoin — PayPal USD (PYUSD) — is now available on Solana blockchain.
The move is designed to make the stablecoin faster and cheaper to use, giving users the choice of multiple blockchains for more flexibility and control, it said on Wednesday (May 29). Press release.
“The Solana blockchain is known for processing massive amounts of transactions at high speed with extremely low costs, providing significant benefits for commercial use cases,” PayPal said in the release.
It is also the most used blockchain for stablecoin transfers, according to data from blockchain analytics platform Artemis, making it ideal for using PYUSD in payments, according to the release.
“PayPal USD was created with the intent to once again revolutionize commerce by providing a fast, easy and affordable payment method for the next evolution of the digital economy,” said PayPal Senior Vice President of Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Digital Currency. José Fernández da Ponte said in the ad. “Making PYUSD available on the Solana blockchain furthers our goal of enabling a digital currency with stable value designed for commerce and payments.”
PayPal introduced PYUSD last August and it started offering it to users of one’s own Venmo payment platform weeks later. And last month, the company partnered with the cross-border money transfer service Xom have collaborated to allow users to make international transactions using PYUSD.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS recently spoke with Sheraz Sherehead of payments at the Solana Foundation, on the company’s push to make crypto payments more mainstream.
“It’s important to know cryptocurrency is not just bitcoin and Doge and NFTs,” Shere said. “Blockchains are really alternative binaries for payments and financial assets.”
However, he added, there is a constant barrier to accelerating cryptocurrency adoption: a lack of awareness, especially among the highest levels of financial services.
“If you think about the mainstream, we’re very early, even on the awareness side,” Shere said.
This is because, although cryptocurrency advocates have a deep understanding of the technology, executives still need more training to truly embrace exploring the practical applications and potential of cryptocurrency in payments.
“For example, people are super excited about all this new stuff [real-time payments] systems,” Shere said. “Let’s imagine a global [real-time payments] system which simply works without central authority. Well, we have it with stablecoins that run on a network like Solana: decentralized and completely permissionless instant settlement.
“Don’t be distracted by the noise,” he added. “There’s a lot of noise, but there are some interesting underlying technologies that are important for financial services leaders to understand.”
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