PayPal announced on Tuesday that crypto users can now transfer funds outside of its platform, a long-awaited feature that will bring the company’s offering closer to other popular cryptocurrency services.

“As of today, PayPal supports native transfer of cryptocurrencies between PayPal and other wallets and exchanges,” the financial giant said in a statement.

The ability to make external transfers on PayPal’s crypto platform, an image of which can be seen below, will start rolling out to users today and will be available to everyone in the US by a week. week or two.

PayPal first launched its crypto offering in late 2020, allowing users to buy, sell and hold four cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin – but not move funds to external destinations like MetaMask, Coinbase or hardware wallets.

The fact that users can now do this is important because PayPal, which also owns the popular Venmo app, is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world to transfer money, and is increasingly used by merchants as a payment platform.

It’s also worth noting that PayPal isn’t backing down from its ambitious crypto plans despite a financial downturn that has seen the company’s share price decline in recent months.

In an interview with Decrypta PayPal executive said the company takes a long-term view when it comes to pursuing a crypto strategy.

“The reason we’re in crypto is that we believe a significant portion of commerce is going to shift to digital currencies,” he said. Jose Fernandez da Ponte, the company’s senior vice president of blockchain and crypto.

Fernandez da Ponte added that this is one of the main reasons why the company does not charge for crypto transactions, namely because its crypto plans revolve around trading and not operating an exchange business. . He also noted that PayPal is bullish on more countries adopting stablecoins and central bank currencies, a move that would help the company’s business model.

It’s currently unclear how much crypto contributes to PayPal’s bottom line, especially since the company does not disclose how many people use its Bitcoin and Ethereum service. If companies like Coinbase and Robinhood, two companies with big crypto businesses, are comparable, crypto transaction volume at PayPal has likely dropped significantly with the recent market downturn.

Fernandez da Ponte said he was unfazed.

“There’s a lot of talk about the crypto winter, but it’s important to look beyond that,” he said. “The macro trend [of broad crypto adoption] is not disturbed.”