Xoom Users Can Now Make Transfers With PayPal Stablecoins

Cross-border money transfer service Xoom now lets users make transactions with PayPal’s USD stablecoin.

Xoom, owned by PayPal, said in a Thursday (April 4) press release that the new funding option lets users in the United States convert the stablecoins (PYUSD) in their linked PayPal Cryptocurrency Hub to U.S. dollars. They can then use it to fund transactions to recipients in approximately 160 countries with no transaction fees.

“When we decided to bring PayPal USD to market, we had two objectives we wanted to achieve: create something that had a stable value to maximize user confidence and ensure it had utility for commerce and payments,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, senior vice president of blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital currencies at PayPal, in the release. “Enabling U.S. users of Xoom the option to fund cross-border money transfers using PYUSD builds on our goal of driving mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies while also offering an easy way to securely send money to friends and family at a lower cost.”

Consumers are seeking cost-effective cross-border payment options, according to the release, which cited a report by the World Bank showing that the global average cost of sending $200 is just over 6%.

PayPal launched PayPal USD in August and began offering it to users of its Venmo payments service weeks later.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about PayPal and Venmo’s decision to begin offering Visa’s peer-to-peer (P2P) payment system, Visa+, as an example of the concept of interoperability.

“Interoperability in payments — paying anyone, anywhere, no matter the network — remains a Holy Grail in payments,” that report said. “And interoperability is a work in progress. But bit by bit and app by app, cross-border, cross-network and cross-wallet compatibility is being forged.”

PYMNTS Intelligence found that 23% of small businesses said their cross-border payment solutions are very or extremely satisfactory, while 38% of these businesses saw an increase in cross-border payments sent or received as recently as 2021.

The research also showed that 70% of U.S. firms saw higher rates of failed payments in cross-border sales compared to domestic sales, with domestic sales failures already making up $89 billion as measured in the first three quarters of last year.

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