by Lydia Ludmila 
FTX Exchange, a renowned crypto derivatives platform, has started allowing its users to deposit fiats through their PayPal accounts. The exchange’s CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried unveiled this news through a tweet on March 2, noting that this new functionality would allow FTX’s customers to top up their trading accounts instantly. Reportedly, this new service would allow deposits in a plethora of fiat currencies, which PayPal supports.
1) you can now get *instant* fiat deposits on FTX
— SBF (@SBF_Alameda) March 2, 2021
2) you can now deposit *any currency*, more or less. Paypal converts for you.
3) Paypal charges are fees! If you're doing a large transfer, wires are slower but cheaper.
4) credit card deposits work through it! https://t.co/Al1RtiE1xc
In his tweet, Bankman-Fried warned that PayPal would charge fees to offer these services. As such, he advised users to make large transfers, seeing as they are cheaper than smaller ones. However, large transfers would talk more time to clear compared to relatively smaller ones. Bankman-Fried added that this functionality would support credit card deposits as well.
Through this improvement, FTX aims to improve its already established derivatives business by offering users a secure, yet simple way to fund their trading accounts. Reportedly, FTX only supported wire transfers and credit cards before integrating the PayPal deposit functionality. As expected, these options were not as flexible compared to PayPal. Apart from this, they only supported a handful of fiat currencies.
Giving crypto a chance to go mainstream
By providing FTX users with a secure fiat on-ramp, PayPal is paving the way for further crypto adoption. This news comes after PayPal announced that it had officially onboarded the crypto bandwagon in October last year. In so doing, the payment processor allowed select users to buy, hold, and sell four cryptocurrencies.
These include Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC).
At the time PayPal’s CEO, Dan Schulman said,
Our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange.
Schulman added that PayPal was looking forward to working with the relevant authorities to help shape the role that digital currencies will play in disrupting the global finance and commerce sectors.
While this service was restricted to US citizens only at launch, PayPal now seeks to expand its crypto offering into the UK. Jonathan Auerbach, PayPal’s executive chief strategy and growth officer, disclosed this news during the firm’s Investor Day 2021 event. According to him, these services are set to go live in the UK in the next few months.
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