PayPal Unveils Crypto Checkout for U.S. Merchants

PayPal announced on July 28, 2025 that it would let U.S. merchants accept payments funded with more than 100 cryptocurrencies through a new service called Pay with Crypto. Customers would connect supported wallets at checkout, while conversion infrastructure would turn the selected digital asset into a stablecoin or fiat currency and deliver U.S. dollars to the merchant.

The development mattered because it placed crypto-funded checkout inside the payment system of an established global processor. Merchants would not need to receive bitcoin, ether or another volatile token directly, maintain blockchain wallets, or keep the customer’s chosen asset on their balance sheets. PayPal instead positioned itself between the customer’s wallet, conversion venues and conventional merchant settlement.

The distinction was important on July 28: PayPal had announced a planned commercial bridge between crypto and ordinary payments, not evidence that cryptocurrency had become a widely used unit of account.

How the checkout was designed

PayPal said the service would support assets including bitcoin, ether, XRP, BNB, solana, USDT and USDC. Its disclosed wallet connections included Coinbase, OKX, Binance, Kraken, Phantom, MetaMask and Exodus, with additional integrations contemplated.

Contemporaneous reporting described a customer linking an existing wallet to PayPal’s checkout page. Depending on the wallet and asset, the cryptocurrency could be sold through centralized or decentralized liquidity, converted through PayPal USD, or otherwise converted into fiat before the merchant received dollars. That workflow meant the customer could spend crypto while the merchant retained familiar accounting and settlement exposure.

The company said Pay with Crypto would become available to U.S. merchants “in the coming weeks.” CBS reported that businesses would initially opt into a beta, with wider availability expected later in 2025. Those were rollout plans, not proof of nationwide availability or transaction volume on July 28.

PayPal’s disclosures also said it had not received New York Department of Financial Services approval for any materially new product or service offered to New York residents. The event-day announcement therefore should not be interpreted as establishing uniform availability in every U.S. jurisdiction.

The fee claim had a narrow comparison

PayPal set an introductory transaction rate of 0.99% through July 31, 2026. A company executive told Fortune that the rate was expected to rise to 1.5% afterward. PayPal promoted the introductory rate as offering savings of up to 90%, but its footnote limited that comparison to its Pay with Crypto charge versus direct credit-card processing fees for international sales, including currency conversion, at a leading processor.

That “up to” figure was a company comparison, not an independently measured average saving for every merchant. It did not account for every possible spread, blockchain fee, wallet cost, refund expense, tax consequence or alternative domestic payment rate. No event-day transaction dataset established what merchants actually paid after all costs.

Stablecoins supplied the connective tissue

The checkout design also showed how stablecoins were being used as payment infrastructure rather than only as crypto-market trading instruments. PayPal’s own PYUSD could serve as an intermediate settlement asset before dollars reached the merchant. The company separately offered rewards on PYUSD held in eligible PayPal accounts, although that balance feature was distinct from the checkout transaction itself.

The announcement came ten days after the GENIUS Act became law on July 18, 2025, creating a federal framework for payment stablecoins. The law did not approve Pay with Crypto or eliminate state licensing requirements, but it formed part of the institutional setting in which a major processor was extending stablecoin-linked services.

PayPal’s July 28 record established the product design, intended asset and wallet coverage, introductory fee and planned U.S. rollout. It did not establish adoption, payment volume, reliability, realized savings or a market-price effect. The consequential development was the processor’s decision to make externally held crypto usable at conventional merchant checkout while insulating participating merchants from directly handling the customer’s token.