YouTube Teams With PayPal to Pay Creators With Stablecoins

YouTube has reportedly begun letting creators on its platform get paid in PayPal’s stablecoin.

So far, this feature only applies to U.S. users, May Zabaneh, PayPal’s head of crypto, told Fortune in a report published Friday (Dec. 12).

A spokesperson for YouTube parent Google confirmed that the site has added payouts for creators in PayPal’s stablecoin but declined to comment otherwise, the report added.

YouTube is already an existing customer of PayPal’s and uses the FinTech giant’s payouts service, which helps large enterprises pay gig workers and contractors.

PayPal earlier this year added the capability for payment recipients to get paid in PayPal’s stablecoin, PYUSD. After that, YouTube decided to give that choice to creators, who get a portion of earnings from the content posted to the platform, said Zabaneh.

“The beauty of what we’ve built is that YouTube doesn’t have to touch crypto and so we can help take away that complexity,” she added.

As the Fortune report noted, YouTube’s interest in stablecoins comes as the world’s tech giants are showing interest in the cryptocurrencies, tokens pegged to assets like the dollar.

Longtime fixtures of the crypto sector, stablecoins have seen a wider level of mainstream adoption this year, particularly after President Donald Trump signed into law the GENIUS Act, the first major piece of legislation regulating the crypto assets.

Advocates, the report added, say stablecoins offer an upgraded version of existing financial infrastructure. Mainstream FinTechs appear to be getting on board, Fortune continued, citing the example of Stripe’s $1.1 billion purchase of the stablecoin startup Bridge in February.

PYMNTS examined YouTube’s entrance into the stablecoin payment space in a report last week on the ongoing mainstreaming of the coins.

“Creator monetization has long been plagued by friction: high fees, slow international payments, currency conversion costs and limited access to traditional banking in many regions,” that report said. “By enabling payouts in stablecoins, YouTube is not endorsing cryptocurrency as an investment class; it is quietly adopting blockchain as a global settlement layer.”

For creators, the report added, especially those outside the U.S. and Europe, stablecoins can offer something more valuable than volatility-driven upside: quicker access to earnings and fewer intermediaries taking their share.

Mark Nelsen, head of product for Visa Commercial Money Solutions, discussed this topic during an earlier interview with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster.

“There are 30 million creators and they’re in all these markets where the local currency isn’t really strong,” he said. “That’s where stablecoins can offer a sweet spot in being able to say, ‘We can pay you immediately.’”