
Coinbase waives fees on PayPal's stablecoin in crypto payments push
April 24 (Reuters) - Coinbase, the largest publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange, is waiving fees on transactions connected to PayPal's stablecoin and allowing its users to redeem the token directly for U.S. dollars, a major milestone for PayPal as the company doubles down on crypto payments.
The move is part of a joint effort by Coinbase (COIN.O), opens new tab and PayPal (PYPL.O), opens new tab to increase the adoption of PayPal's stablecoin, called PYUSD, which it launched in 2023. PayPal says the integration with Coinbase will allow merchants on its network to settle directly in PYUSD instead of traditional financial rails.
Stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a constant value, usually a 1:1 dollar peg, are commonly used by crypto traders to move funds between tokens. Their use has grown rapidly in recent years, and proponents like PayPal say that they could be used to send payments instantly.
"This combination of being able to connect the consumer bases of PayPal and Coinbase, bringing our merchants to the table, bringing [Coinbase's] institutional access to the table -- we think that it creates a really, really powerful combination," said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal's senior vice president of blockchain, crypto and digital currencies.
The two companies also plan on partnering for future efforts to increase the adoption of stablecoins for payments and explore use cases for PYUSD on decentralized finance platforms, which allow users to transact directly on a blockchain network without intermediaries.
"This is a partnership that is all about advancing the future of global payments, taking stable coins mainstream, pushing forward this technology," said Lauren Abendschein, global head of institutional sales at Coinbase.
Coinbase has previously only offered the same zero-fee treatment for Circle's stablecoin, USDC, the number two stablecoin in terms of market capitalization.
"Definitely there will be cases for payments where people will make a choice between PYUSD and USDC, and we want to make sure that we establish PYUSD as the best stablecoin for payments," said Fernandez da Ponte.
Circle has also doubled down on the use of its stablecoin for payments. On Monday, the company announced the launch of its Circle Payments network designed for cross-border payment and real-time settlement of its stablecoins between financial institutions.
Stablecoins have a market capitalization of more than $238 billion, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. PayPal's stablecoin has a market cap of only about $872 million, but it could stand to gain greater market share through its integration with Coinbase.
The partnership between the two companies is happening as the U.S. Congress appears likely to pass a bill creating stablecoin rules for the first time. The House of Representatives and the Senate have both advanced bills to create a regulatory regime for stablecoins, and the White House said it wants to see a final bill passed by August.
President Donald Trump has sought to broadly overhaul U.S. cryptocurrency policies after courting cash from the industry during his presidential campaign. In office, he has appointed crypto-friendly leaders to agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and signed an executive order last month to create a strategic cryptocurrency reserve.
In addition, Trump Media & Technology Group, which is majority-owned by the president, on Tuesday said it had reached a binding agreement to roll out an array of retail investment products, including crypto, in its latest bid to diversify into financial services.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Finextra
5 hours ago
- Finextra
Selfbook chooses PayPal as agentic commerce partner
Selfbook has tapped PayPal as its commerce partner to make paying for hotels faster, smarter, and fully embedded in agentic experiences. 0 Travelers who checkout with PayPal and Venmo will gain access to exclusive rates, generating meaningful savings, and driving better conversion for Selfbook's hotel customers. Selfbook's hotel customers will be featured on the Offers tab in the PayPal app. Additionally, PayPal Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) will be offered for many hotel brands that integrate with Selfbook. The partnership will advance travel booking into the age of agentic AI by leveraging conversational AI to help customers book and pay. Selfbook and PayPal are both partners with Perplexity, allowing consumers to search, book and pay for hotels within the chat. As consumers increasingly rely on AI agents for shopping and making plans, it's critical that enterprises have the ability to make the checkout experience seamless through an agent chat. Enterprises that offer PayPal and Venmo at checkout typically see increased conversion rates. PayPal has shown to help increase conversion by an average of 84%1 among customers who pay online for travel. Selfbook's hotel customers will soon benefit from this. Selfbook will integrate PayPal, Venmo, and PayPal's BNPL solutions as payment options within hotel booking experiences, providing consumers with greater choice and enhanced flexibility at checkout. Selfbook's credit card processing will move to PayPal's Enterprise Payments. 'Travel is one of the biggest purchases people make online. With PayPal, we're uniting two things travelers care about most: trust and value,' said Khalid Meniri, CEO of Selfbook. 'What was once a multi-step process will be a streamlined, AI-powered checkout—with exclusive rates and low friction.' 'AI is fundamentally changing how consumers plan and pay for their vacations and getaways,' said Alex Chriss, President and CEO of PayPal. 'Together with Selfbook, we're embedding hotel booking in the new ways travelers are planning trips with agentic chats like Perplexity. PayPal is thrilled to bring agentic commerce solutions to travel.' For hotels, this partnership represents a powerful shift towards direct distribution to consumers through offers within the PayPal app. Through PayPal Offers, PayPal users can access exclusive rates from Selfbook's network of hotels, which do not incur commission fees—significantly enhancing their profitability. This strategy allows hotels to control their brand narrative and pricing while leveraging PayPal's extensive network of millions of authenticated, digitally savvy consumers.


Coin Geek
a day ago
- Coin Geek
Circle's fiery Nasdaq debut pushes Gemini to file IPO paperwork
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The explosive Nasdaq debut of stablecoin issuer Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL) is proof positive that irrational crypto exuberance is impeding investors' ability to read a balance sheet. On June 5, USDC stablecoin issuer Circle's first day of trading on the Nasdaq exchange saw the shares soar from their initial price of $31—which was already upsized twice from the original pre-launch range of $24-$26—to above $104 before closing Thursday's trading above $83. The demand was so manic that the Nasdaq's automatic limiting feature halted trading three times in the first hour the shares were available due to the extreme volatility. The shares jumped another 29% on Friday, closing just under $108, and rose again Monday, topping $138 before surrendering some of those gains to close at $115.25 (+7% for the day, +270% since its debut). How overblown is this reaction? Consider that by mid-Monday, Circle's market capitalization was half of USDC's market cap of $61 billion (which, ironically, has fallen slightly from its pre-Nasdaq level). The investor enthusiasm is all the more puzzling given Circle's admission that 98% of its revenue comes from interest generated on the U.S. Treasury bills that it holds as reserves backing that $61 billion of circulating USDC. Unlike its exchange partners, Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) and Binance—to whom Circle pays significant fees for enjoying premium placement and promotion—Circle makes bupkis off secondary USDC transactions. Moreover, while T-bills offered generous returns as interest rates spiked during the pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump has been pressuring the Federal Reserve to drastically cut interest rates. Current Fed chair Jerome Powell has to date resisted these 'suggestions,' but Powell's term expires next May, and Trump has already teased that he has Powell's more willing replacement picked out. Some analysts have suggested that every quarter-point cut to the Fed's rates will shave $100 million off Circle's annual earnings, requiring 10% growth in either the overall stablecoin market or Circle's slice of that market just to offset each quarter-point reduction. While Coinbase makes major bank off its USDC ties, Circle's prospectus showed its 2024 profits were seriously declining even as its revenue rose. Circle further warned that it expects its expenses to continue to rise 'as we add distributors and approved participants' tasked with helping Circle boost USDC adoption. There's also the fact that USDC now has a significant stateside competitor in the form of USD1, the stablecoin issued in March by World Liberty Financial (WLF). WLF is the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform controlled by a corporation linked to the Trump family. In March, the president issued an executive order suggesting that stablecoins could play a major role in government-issued payments. Given the lack of serious pushback on the Trump family's questionable crypto ventures, USD1 might get preferential treatment for those digital disbursements. Regardless, the Nasdaq feeding frenzy was welcomed by Circle, which withdrew its original initial public offering (IPO) plans in late 2022 due to the unforeseen arrival of 'crypto winter' and its string of bankruptcies, frauds, and highly public meltdowns. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire tweeted his pride and gratitude for the support of everyone who'd helped the company get to this point. Allaire's personal fortune has soared by over $2 billion after selling 1.6 million of his shares, and he retains ownership of another 18 million shares, along with options and restricted units. The momentum behind Circle is such that companies have already filed two applications for Circle-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs). One is based on applying 2x leverage to Circle's share price, while the other is a covered call options strategy. Tether to Circle: 'ours is bigger' Circle's Nasdaq rocket ride has many wondering what valuation might await Tether, the issuer of the market-leading USDT stablecoin, should it choose to follow Circle's IPO trail. When someone suggested Tether could be worth $515 billion, CEO Paolo Ardoino called that figure 'a bit bearish,' given the 100,000+ BTC tokens and 50+ tons physical gold that Ardoino claims are part of the reserves backing USDT's $155 billion market cap. Tether has never submitted its reserves to an official third-party audit, offering instead quarterly attestations that reflect only what its accounts claim to hold on a single day in each 90-day period. Ardoino has repeatedly claimed to be 'engaging' with unidentified 'Big 4' accounting firms regarding a potential audit, but this process remains very much a mirage. Ardoino has justified this glacial pursuit by claiming that auditors are fearful of taking on crypto clients. However, Circle's IPO prospectus confirmed that Big 4 firm Deloitte & Touche LLP had audited the financial statements contained therein, including the 'financial statements and financial highlights of Circle Reserve Fund.' Tether notably self-reports billions of dollars in profits every quarter, including a total profit of $13 billion for 2024 as a whole. This is over 83x the profit reported by Circle last year, despite USDT's market cap being only ~3x USDC's at the end of last year. Small wonder, then, that Ardoino tweeted that Tether has '[n]o need to go public.' That said, 'no desire' to go public might be more appropriate, given that doing so would force Tether's hand on performing that elusive and overdue audit. Back to the top ↑ Gemini twins say 'me two' The day after Circle's meteoric Nasdaq debut, the Gemini digital asset exchange announced that it had 'confidentially' filed its own IPO paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The confidential angle will allow Gemini to get the wheels in motion without having to disclose the hard numbers behind its operations until closer to its listing launch date. The company said it has yet to decide on the size of the offering or a potential share price range. The news isn't that surprising, as Gemini is one of a handful of digital asset firms that appear newly emboldened to cash in their chips in the infinitely more relaxed market since President Trump was sworn into office in January. Gemini, which is controlled by twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, was among the many crypto firms in recent years to be served with an SEC civil complaint for selling unregistered securities to the public. However, that suit was put on the back burner in February following Trump's inauguration and the installation of crypto-friendly individuals at the top of the SEC org chart. Gemini is not a major player in the centralized exchange market, currently ranked #15 on CoinGecko's list of top exchanges by trading volume (U.S. rivals Coinbase and Kraken ranked fifth and sixth, respectively.) But as Circle's Nasdaq coming-out party suggests, investors are in a 'take my money' mood, so why not strike while the iron is hot (and the reasoning is ice cold)? Back to the top ↑ Uphold on a moment… Also reportedly mulling a plunge into the IPO pool is Uphold, a U.S.-based digital asset payment/trading platform that also allows users to trade more traditional assets, including fiat currencies, certain equities, and precious metals. Uphold CEO Simon McLoughlin told The Block that the company had appointed FT Partners to explore various strategic options, including a potential public float. Uphold is an even smaller player than Gemini, with suggestions of a valuation of around $1.5 billion. However, McLoughlin said the company generated over $300 million in revenue last year, up from just $80 million in 2022. Uphold could also become a potential acquisition target for traditional finance companies looking to stake out a position in digital assets without building something from scratch. Last week, Uphold struck a deal to allow U.K.-based investment/trading platform IG Group to offer digital asset trades, with Uphold executing customer transactions and handling pricing data. The deal made IG Group the first U.K.-listed firm to offer such trades to retail customers. Back to the top ↑ Binance bucks the trend Meanwhile, Binance CEO Richard Teng told The Street that his company won't be stampeding toward a market listing anytime soon. Teng said 'very important corporate decisions' like an initial public offering were something that would have to be discussed 'at the board of directors level and discuss with the shareholders what's the intention.' Binance is the unquestioned market-leading digital asset exchange, controlling around two-fifths of all centralized exchange spot token trading volume. Teng said Binance was in 'very healthy financial shape' and continued to enjoy 'sharp growth in terms of user numbers throughout the world, both institution and new retail users.' Binance is also not exactly starving for working capital, having just received a $2 billion investment from the Abu Dhabi state-supported investment group MGX in March. The investment was the first institutional investment deal that Binance struck, and the exchange could likely secure similar large deals from other institutional investors should it choose to pursue those opportunities. Back to the top ↑ Watch: Teranode is the digital backbone of Bitcoin title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="">


Reuters
2 days ago
- Reuters
Robinhood shares fall as S&P 500 inclusion hopes dashed
June 9 (Reuters) - Shares of Robinhood Markets (HOOD.O), opens new tab dipped 5% in premarket trading on Monday, after S&P Dow Jones Indices made no changes to the S&P 500 membership following recent speculation that the online brokerage would be added to the index. S&P Dow Jones Indices announced late on Friday that it will not be making any changes to the components of the benchmark S&P 500 as part of quarterly rebalancing. Robinhood stock rallied in recent weeks, touching its highest level since 2021 market debut on Friday, as investors priced in a possible inclusion in the index. Bank of America analysts earlier this month touted the company as the "prime candidate" to join the S&P 500. Robinhood's shares were down 5% at $71.2 before the bell, while marketing platform AppLovin (APP.O), opens new tab, which also rallied last week on bets of inclusion, dropped 5% to $397. To be included on the index, a company has to be U.S. domiciled, listed on a prominent U.S. exchange and have a market capitalization of $20.5 billion or higher. Robinhood had a market valuation of $66.1 billion as of Friday's close, with shares more than doubling in value this year and trading well above its IPO price of $38 apiece. Crypto-exchange operator Coinbase Global (COIN.O), opens new tab was the latest addition to the S&P 500 last month, making it the first digital asset player to be included in the index.