PayPal set to launch crypto trading in the UK and may embrace DeFi

Global payments platform PayPal is looking toward the United Kingdom as the next market in which to expand its crypto trading services.

According to the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, PayPal has done very well out of crypto trading for the period. CEO Dan Schulman stated that the U.K. is likely to be the next country where crypto trading is offered.

“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.”

He stated that the company is adding “incremental functionality” to the crypto trading platform, having already increased the crypto purchasing limits to $100,000 per week on July 15.

PayPal is also working on open banking integration, Schulman stated, adding that it “will increase the ability to fully integrate it into ACH and do faster payments.” ACH is PayPal’s Automated Clearing House, a payment service that enables merchants to electronically collect payments from customers by directly debiting their checking or saving accounts.

Schulman revealed that pay with Venmo revenues grew by 183% year over year and that there has been strong adoption and trading of crypto on Venmo. The PayPal-owned firm Venmo launched crypto trading services to an estimated 70 million users in mid-April.

Related: Will PayPal’s crypto integration bring crypto to the masses? Experts answer

DeFi integration?

Regarding decentralized finance (DeFi), Schulman suggested that PayPal was looking into "what the next generation of the financial system looks like" and how to integrate smart contracts and decentralized apps into the platform:

“How can we use smart contracts more efficiently? How can we digitize assets and open those up to consumers that may not have had access to that before? There are some interesting DeFi applications as well. And so we are working really hard.”

The comments come at the same time a leaked video from last week’s EthCC conference in Paris revealed that the world’s largest decentralized exchange, Uniswap, has been in talks with PayPal, among other fintech firms, regarding DeFi integration.

On Wednesday, Cointelegraph reported that PayPal’s “super app,” which will feature high yield savings, early access to direct deposit funds, messaging capabilities and additional crypto functionality, is almost ready for launch.