During its Q3 earnings call on 2 November 2020, PayPal reinforced the rising importance of digital currencies, inevitability of CBDCs and the permanent shift towards a digital economy.
Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal said:
My conversations with central banks, with the regulators, with a number of folks in the crypto field, there's no question that digital currencies are going to be rising in importance, having increasing functionality and increasing prominence. CBDCs, from my perspective and all my conversations, are a matter of when and how they're done, not if.
This comes after the recent announcement by PayPal that it will be allowing US account holders to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies and the expansion into international markets by its Venmo Platform.
Dan Schulman said:
... [It will] allow customers to use cryptocurrencies as a funding instrument to shop across all 28 million of our merchants. This solution will not involve any additional integrations, volatility risk or incremental transaction fees for, either consumers or merchants and will fundamentally bolster the utility of cryptocurrenices. This is just the beginning of the opportunities we see as we work hand in hand with regulators to accept new forms of digital currencies.
Given their huge network of merchants of commerce, the new digital infrastructure and the range of currencies available, PayPal will drastically increasing the utility of digital currencies internationally, even without permitting withdrawal of the tokens from their wallets.