PayPal’s ‘ultimate goal’ is to weave crypto and traditional payments

PayPal’s Jose Fernandez da Ponte explained why he’s not only focused on stablecoin market caps when growing PYUSD

article-image

JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share


This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


It’s hard to deny that crypto is having a moment, especially when the President of the United States posts about crypto on a Sunday morning. 

While that’s currently the bullish force pushing us forward to start the week — after a less than stellar time last week — it’s hard to say whether the positive momentum is enough to last. 

Here’s the good thing though: We don’t necessarily need to just rely on posts from world leaders to legitimize the space, we’re seeing that happen in a myriad of ways.

Take PayPal, for example.

“I think that the ultimate goal is that whatever you see a way to move money around, on the PayPal side, you should have an option to do that with digital currencies,” PayPal’s Jose Fernandez da Ponte told me.

He thinks that this is the year overlap between crypto and traditional payments becomes a bigger focus. Clearly, stablecoins are the “killer application of blockchains for payments” right now, he noted. The sector has a market cap of $220 billion, according to rwa.xyz.

PYUSD, PayPal’s stablecoin offering, has a market cap of roughly $760 million which puts it in the top 10 stablecoins, but it’s nowhere near Circle and Tether — the two whales in the space.

For da Ponte though, market share isn’t the main focus. 

“I think that the obsession with market cap is because that’s an artifact of how stable coins get monetized. Today, a lot of the large issuers basically make money out of the deal done on the reserves. We think that over time, that’s going to be less relevant, that monetization will move away from interest rates and more toward transaction fees, and that stablecoins are going to be monetized by consumer flows,” he explained. 

Now that doesn’t mean that they don’t want PYUSD to grow, da Ponte clarified, adding “we want to be bigger than we are today.” But rather than obsess over market cap, da Ponte and his team are focused on chain transfer volume. 

What’s interesting is that da Ponte thinks we’re going to see more of what he calls a “stablecoin sandwich,” which is “fiat on one side, and then the stablecoin as a sort of settlement layer and then you see fiat on the other side.”

“We have seen that in our own remittance flows. So when we are settling with partners in the Philippines and other markets in stablecoins these days, the consumer sees fiat, the sender sees fiat, the receiver sees fiat, and we are capturing the advantages of stablecoins on the infrastructure side.”

Obviously, being the payments giant it is, PayPal has to straddle the line of being focused on both fiat and digital currencies and allowing for the customers to have that choice when interacting on the platform. 

Full disclosure: I did ask if PayPal would consider a yield-bearing stablecoin offering if the conditions were right. Da Ponte was a good sport about it, telling me that it’s “difficult to talk about hypotheticals,” but they haven’t really considered it. That doesn’t mean it’s totally off or on the table — just not on the radar of the payments giant at this time. 

The way da Ponte explained PayPal’s focus is simple: Weave traditional payments seamlessly with crypto. But more than that, make it effortless for non-crypto native folks and crypto natives alike. 

And that’s the kind of adoption we need.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) represent low-hanging fruit in a massive market ripe for Web3-driven disruption. The global CDN market was valued at ~$28B in 2024, and is projected to surpass $140B by 2034, (18.75% CAGR) underscoring the immense demand for efficient content delivery.

article-image

With $30 million in funding and EverQuest’s creator at the helm, it’s possible, but not guaranteed

article-image

As Satoshi-era wallets saw over $8 billion worth of BTC on the move, Congress is gearing up for “Crypto Week”

article-image

Bitcoin’s runaway success was partly driven by Slashdot

article-image

Blockworks Research data shows that VC spending is back on the rise after a slow May

article-image

After rejecting a bid from the AI cloud-computing startup last year, Core Scientific agreed to be acquired in a deal expected to close by Q4 2025

article-image

Sponsored

Plume’s collaboration with TRON will unlock cross-chain RWA yield for one of the world’s largest blockchain ecosystems