Payment giant Paypal announced on Wednesday that U.S. merchants can now buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency directly from their business accounts. This latest move is aimed at expanding cryptocurrency functionality for millions of businesses across the U.S., although the feature is not currently available in New York State.

According to Paypal’s senior vice president of blockchain, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, the decision came after observing the growing demand from business owners for cryptocurrency services similar to what has been available to individual consumers. He stated:

Business owners have increasingly expressed a desire for the same cryptocurrency capabilities available to consumers.

The company has further expanded the service to allow business account holders to transfer cryptocurrencies externally on-chain to third-party wallets, broadening the use cases for digital currency transactions among U.S. merchants.

Paypal has been increasing its involvement in the cryptocurrency space over the past few years. In 2020, the company launched a service allowing users to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency via Paypal and Venmo. In 2023, it introduced a stablecoin called Paypal USD (PYUSD), and in April, PYUSD was integrated with Paypal’s Xoom platform to facilitate fee-free international transfers. Most recently, Paypal expanded PYUSD availability to the Solana blockchain, further enhancing users’ flexibility.