Paypal gets ready for crypto business in UK as it builds Ireland team
Paypal, the global payments giant, is looking towards the UK as the next place where it wants to grow its crypto business offering, as laid out in its earnings call last week.
As if on cue, we are also seeing reports on job postings being made by the company in Ireland to bolster its support team as it gets ready to launch crypto trading in the UK. Paypal was one of the first payments giants to embrace crypto, bitcoin in particular and though the crypto offering from Paypal right now is pretty much restricted at this point of time, it is expected to grow and expand in the coming months as the company witnesses impressive growth in its crypto business.
“Yeah, well, we continue to be really pleased with the momentum we’re seeing on crypto. We’re going to launch, hopefully, maybe even next month in the U.K., open up trading there.”, said Paypal CEO Dan Schulman last week.
This news comes in the midst of increased regulatory control and scrutiny of the crypto exchange Binance by the UK regulators and so it would be interesting to see how their view the Paypal offering when it arrives. But to their credit, Paypal has been slow and steady with its progress as far as its crypto entry is concerned and they would likely enter the UK only after getting the required nod from the regulators.
The company has started a small support team in Ireland probably in anticipation of its entry into the UK and its growth across Europe and it includes positions in blockchain, crypto, and digital currencies units. So far, its offering has been pretty light and so it is believed that it would delve deep into crypto and DeFi in the coming months as it grows its presence in different regions. It has been looking to expand its team rapidly with more than a dozen open positions in crypto as of this date.
On the one hand, we are seeing the regulators cracking down on crypto trading while on the other hand, we are seeing major companies and institutional investors continuing to enter and invest into this space which makes it a very interesting tussle between the two sides of the crypto space. Both sides need to work together for the ecosystem to grow in the coming years and the sooner that participants on both sides of the spectrum realize that, the better.
