The massive adoption of cryptocurrencies continues to gain traction. More and more world-known companies are starting to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as payment options, give their customers access to the crypto market, and create blockchain services. Companies that were previously skeptical about Bitcoin such as Visa, Mastercard, and JP Morgan are slowly starting to enter the cryptocurrency industry. All this has a positive effect on the crypto industry and makes it more accessible to a wide audience.
Here are a few services and companies that have already started using cryptocurrencies in their work:
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Paypal
Paypal has announced in October 2020 that it will be joining the crypto markets in 2021, offering US customers to buy, sell, and hold major cryptocurrencies. And recently, such a service has become available. PayPal has started allowing US account holders to use their cryptocurrency holdings to pay online merchants globally.
Users can convert Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin into fiat currencies in their PayPal wallets. This new functionality is testing right now in the US as if everything goes well, PayPal might deliver it in other countries of its operation as well. But even having the US only, PayPal has already become one of the largest mainstream financial companies to open its network to cryptocurrencies.
Square
Square is a US-based company that has been founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, a well-known BTC bull. Square has a CashApp service that allows bitcoin purchasing using mobile devices. Square holds users’ BTC as custodian. Crypto withdrawals are possible but not always available due to security reasons. For example, CashApp requires ID verification for making withdrawals to external wallets.
CashApp is quite a mainstream wallet among US investors and a lot of BTC gets bought and sold using this service. But still, those operations do not represent a meaningful portion of the income for Square.
Robinhood
Robinhood is an investing platform that has become extremely popular during the Covid-19 pandemic and is often mentioned as a service where young people push some assets, crypto markets as well. Robinhood allows buying and trading top cryptocurrencies but coin withdrawals are currently not supported. Users also can’t transfer existing coins from other wallets into the Robinhood one.
According to the company, users’ crypto funds are stored using a combination of cold and hot wallets with the majority of them being in cold storage. Such a hybrid system is a standard for most crypto exchanges to provide high security.
Revolut
In 2020 UK-based banking app Revolut has become more crypto-friendly, providing its clients an opportunity to buy and hold crypto in their accounts. Users control their crypto holdings bought using Revolut. But if the company decides to end the agreement with the customer, it may sell its holding at the current price and provide the user an equivalent amount of “e-money”. Revolut works with crypto as a custodial agent that transfers crypto on the users’ behalf.
There are no separate cryptocurrency accounts for customers since cryptocurrencies are held in “virtual account”. This service is used for holding crypto of all customers.
Goldman Sachs
In 2017 investment bank Goldman Sachs started setting up a crypto trading desk for wealth management customers. But this service was put on hold after the end of the crypto boom. Recently, Goldman Sachs decided to relaunch the crypto trading desk. This service is part of a broader push into crypto markets that the investment bank may use to attempt crypto ETF.
Goldman Sachs is also looking for re-entering custody services for customers that want to hold and trade crypto assets. Bitcoin futures trading is in plans as well.
Amazon
Amazon doesn’t accept bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies directly. It uses the Purse.io service to offer bitcoin purchases for shopping with the biggest online retailer. website. This service connects people who have bitcoin and want to buy something on Amazon with people who want to get BTC and can fulfill the order.
Twitch
Talking about Amazon, it is also worth mentioning Amazon-owned company Twitch. It accepts Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash as a payment option for its services. So the followers can support their beloved streamers and content creators using cryptocurrency.
Microsoft
Microsoft allows users to top up their accounts using Bitcoin. Clients can use these coins to buy movies and apps in the store. Also, Xbox owners can purchase video games and different subscriptions with bitcoin as a payment option. Microsoft first added the bitcoin payment option in 2014, halted it a few times due to “instability” but shortly after resumed this service.
Crypto-native services
Many companies that are just joining the crypto world use special payments gateways. They allow businesses to add the ability to buy cryptocurrency on the website or integrate other services such as storage and exchange. There are a lot of gateways for different purposes, and some of them are provided by crypto exchanges directly. For example, the CEX.IO cryptocurrency exchange has a CEX Direct service that allows adding and using crypto payments on websites.
But crypto is not only about purchasing, trading, and transferring money. At crypto exchanges, you can also find a lot of other crypto-native services like crypto-backed loans, staking and savings that allow getting earnings by holding crypto on the platform, and others.
Cryptocurrencies have a wide range of applications, as already proven by crypto-native and traditional companies. Along with further adoption, the number of services that use crypto in their work will only increase and they will become more and more user-friendly.
