Tag: payments

PayPal Finally Allows Users to Buy, Sell and Hold Crypto

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The gradual mainstream acceptance of digital currencies has recently made a huge leap forward after PayPal, one of the world’s most popular payment services, entered the digital currency market. Its customers will now be able to buy, sell, hold and spend digital or virtual currencies including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin among others.

Thankfully, the rollout of this new measure is already underway in the United States. A global rollout will follow but the earliest this will happen is next year. PayPal users from non-US customers will therefore have to wait a little longer before they can be able to transact using these virtual currencies. The stated timeline is, however, very encouraging.

How Will It Work?

As mentioned above, PayPal has already laid out a roadmap for the new development. In case you are wondering how the new system works, here is a brief explanation of what to expect. Whenever you use any of the accepted digital currencies to pay someone on PayPal, the payment service provider will convert the amount to the equivalent national currency. Sent amounts will not be received in the virtual currencies themselves. This can be rather disappointing but perhaps some changes will be made soon.

For now, the plan seems to revolve around getting as many people on board as possible. Their goal is “to increase consumer understanding and adoption of cryptocurrency. As part of this offering, PayPal will provide account holders with educational content to help them understand the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”

Naturally, the move has been met with some criticism. For instance, renowned economist Nouriel Roubini believes that the decision to bring digital currencies to the service is the same as “crypto gambling”. This kind of criticism is, of course, expected but there is a pretty huge possibility that more people will come around in the not so distant future.

Why This Is A Big Deal

It goes without saying that this is a pretty big milestone for the crypto community. Businesses such as online casinos that have been paying out winning in crypto will, for instance, have an extra option. It really helps that PayPal is already an established brand with a very robust customer base.

For PayPal, this move represents a unique opportunity for customer engagement. More digital currency users are definitely going to be giving the payment service provider way more attention now.

Tether Gains Popularity as Payment Method

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There have been lots of debates regarding the legitimacy of Tether (USDT) as a stable means of payments as well as its speculated involvement in the manipulation of the prices of digital currencies. Despite this, the digital currency has been growing with a decent number of merchants now accepting it as a preferred means of stability. This is largely because of its unmatched stability.

As it stands, Tether occupies the fourth spot in the United States’ crypto market. This means that it is already highly regarded as a stablecoin and therefore its rise to the top should not be as much of a surprise. Over the past year, merchants who are using the digital currency have recorded a significant increase in Tether volumes over the past year.

According to CoinPayments.net, one of the world’s largest digital currency payment processors, Tether currently accounts for up to 30 percent of the volume of transactions it processes. In comparison, a year ago the volume of Tether transactions was 30 times less than what has been recently reported. The consistency in Tether’s meteoric rise has been quite consistent across a number of other cryptocurrency payment processors as well.

Why Now?

Well, unlike other digital currencies, Tether burst into the scene with the promise of living up to the stablecoin objective. The digital currency avoided fluctuations and instead opted for at least a one-to-one ratio with the US dollar by managing a reserve.

This feature made it quite popular and many merchants would often accept payments in other digital currencies such as Bitcoin and convert it to Tether in order to “hedge against the volatility” of other cryptocurrencies. The over 265 companies that accept payments in Tether has since switched and are now taking Tether payments directly.

What It Means for Other Digital Currencies

While Tether’s use in commerce is definitely a positive development for the crypto community, its growth has had a rather negative impact on other digital currencies especially the ones considered to be market leaders such as Ether and Bitcoin. Owing to several factors, Bitcoin and Ether have lost their appeal among many investors and due to the rapidly shifting dynamics of the crypto industry, a lot of focus is being given to alternative crypto solutions.

Moreover, there is a need for more accessible digital currency solutions in such areas as gambling and other adult product like cannabis and sex dolls. Tether has caught up and its stability is making many other digital currencies seem like raw deals for many customers. Perhaps this is the beginning of its ascension to the top of the crypto market.

Ripple Acquires Crypto Trading Firm in Iceland

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Renowned San-Francisco-based blockchain company Ripple has recently announced an expansion bid that involves a sizeable increase in its engineering team as well as a move to Iceland. The company which is behind the very popular XRP token is hoping to grow its brand in Iceland by acquiring Algrim, a digital currency trading firm that is based in Iceland.

Through the acquisition, Ripple is aiming at providing better services to customers of its RippleNet product suite. The company has been working very hard to expand the reach of its cross-border payments solution and the recent expansion will go a long way in helping it achieve that goal.

With RippleNet, businesses are able to make cross-border payments between several countries. This is especially good news for the unbanked particularly in areas that do not have widespread banking options. Ripple facilitates the cross-border payments by swapping the original currency with XRP before sending across borders after which it is swapped back to fiat currency at the destination of the payment.

Why Algrim?

Well, to accommodate the sudden and mostly temporary busts of XRP purchases in the process of these payments, the business requires a large supply of the token to dig into. This is what makes the acquisition of Algrim such a monumental leap forward for Ripple. The Iceland-based crypto trading firm will be of huge importance when it comes to building out Ripple’s “On-Demand Liquidity” – this is what the company calls its supply of XRP used for making payments with the digital token.

“With built-in expertise in trading and exchanges, the addition of Algrim’s engineering talent to our team will be instrumental in continuing the momentum we’re already experiencing with On-Demand Liquidity,” Christopher Kanaan, the SVP of Engineering at Ripple commented.

Both companies are quite happy with the new arrangement especially because they share a vision to enable mainstream and wider adoption of digital assets and blockchain technology.

What Next?

Going forward, the new Iceland office will serve as a regional hub for Ripple as it moves ahead with its massive global expansion bid. RippleNet currently boasts of more than 200 customers including Xendpay. There are also several other businesses that use XRP to send payment across borders and they include companies like MoneyGram, Cuallix as well as Mercury FX. In addition to all that, Ripple has also been inking more partnerships across the globe.

All its expansion plans aside, Ripple has been going through a bit of trouble with regards to the price of its XRP token. The price of the token fell significantly this year and it has been showing very little signs of a speedy recovery. Hopefully, these partnerships might be able to help prop-up the price.

Crypto Gaming Platform Helping Physical Casinos Move Online

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Pbet, a brand new crypto-powered gambling platform has recently launched an initiative that is set to help land-based or physical casinos to move online. The initiative not only promises to see the casino operators incur much lower costs but also intends to afford them with the assurance of more savings. In addition to that, the platform is also meant to ensure better credibility for casino players thanks to its blockchain crypto-based Unified Gaming Platform.

Pbet is already considered to be a next-gen gaming platform and its crypto token that is referred to as “PBET” is also beginning to take off. In fact, the platform has already had its Initial Exchange Offering (IOE) in a number of popular cryptocurrency exchanges including the renowned P2PB2B. Furthermore, Pbet has gone ahead to further its participation through IEO sessions in a good number of other leading exchanges like ExMarkets. Now, after the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO), the platform’s token will now be officially listed on host exchanges where its holders will be able to trade it.

Revolutionary Casino Management System

Pbet has been around for over two years now and in that time, it has been able to penetrate the gaming market thanks to “Genuina”, its casino management system. Genuina is the brainchild of some hospitality and gaming industry veteran. Now, as mentioned earlier, Pbet has plans to create a smooth convergence of physical casinos and online casinos while at the same time integrating crypto-based payments.

The platform’s blockchain technology is set to help in ensuring that there is a trust factor for players through the delivery of transparency information among other things. This mission is based on the company’s vision to combine all the three pillars of physical casinos, that is, the players, the physical casinos themselves as well as Pbet.

One of the most notable but rather overlooked features is the fact that, with the adoption of blockchain technology, Pbet will now be able to offer the players crypto payment solutions that are not only more affordable but also assure the customers of much faster withdrawal speeds.

“We will enable physical casinos to beat the high cost of penetrating into online space with our blockchain crypto-based turn-key, zero fix fees, revenue sharing system. Pbet also assures almost ‘0’ transaction fees and super-fast withdrawals for players,” stated a Pbet spokesperson.

The convergence between crypto or blockchain and the gambling industry has been a long time coming but it is certainly refreshing to see companies such as Pbet take the leap forward by actualizing it. As such, it will not be long before even more companies begin to adopt the new model