PayPal's Venmo now allows users to buy and sell crypto

PayPal's social payment arm Venmo has officially launched the service to let its users buy, hold and sell crypto assets within its mobile app.

The company said in an announcement that the service, called "Crypto on Venmo," starts to roll out on Tuesday and will be available to its 70 million customers directly in the Venmo app within the next few weeks. 

Similar to PayPal, the offering on Venmo is enabled through the partnership with Paxos, which facilitates the transactions behind the scene.  BTC, ETH, LTC and BCH are the only supported crypto assets within the Venmo app.

The move follows reports last year that the crypto offering will start with PayPal first and Venmo is slated to follow in 2021. In order to do that, PayPal obtained a conditional license from the New York Department of Financial Services, which allowed it to offer crypto buying and selling.

Venmo said in the announcement that according to its 2020 Customer Behavior Study, over 30% of its customers "have already started purchasing crypto or equities, 20% of which started during the pandemic."

About Author

Wolfie joined The Block’s news team in 2020 and switched to the research side in 2021 to focus on crypto mining analysis. Prior to The Block, he had been a journalist at CoinDesk for three years. Wolfie has a background in financial journalism.