With the financial world slowly adapting the culture of cryptocurrencies it finally looks like payment services will have to bend in the same direction as well. PayPal announced on Wednesday that it will allow users to hold Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. This is both in its online wallet and shop.

The new crypto service now makes PayPal one of the largest companies to provide consumers access to virtual coins. Additionally, this could help Bitcoin and rival currencies gain wider adoption as viable payment methods.

The American payment service company hopes this will encourage a global use of cryptocurrency. Hopefully, it could also prepare PayPal’s network for new digital currencies that various central banks and firms are currently developing.

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“We are working with central banks and thinking of all forms of digital currencies and how PayPal can play a role,” said PayPal’s President and Chief Executive Dan Schulman.

The very first beneficiaries will account holder sin the U.S. in the next few weeks. PayPal then plans to roll out the service further to other countries in the first half of 2021.

It will obviously be fascinating to see how all this unfolds once it hits the whole globe and whether it could influence something much bigger.

What brings uncertainty is the volatility that comes with cryptocurrencies. This is one factor that has caused a lot of authorities to speak highly against their use in their respective nations. Moreover, transactions in digital currencies tend to be slower and more costly compared to other mainstream payment systems.

Currently, PayPal has 346 million active accounts around the world and has conducted payment transactions worth $222 billion in Q2 2020 alone.