PayPal uses stablecoin to make $6.5m investment in Mesh crypto venture – Ledger Insights
PayPal Ventures announced it invested $6.5 million in Mesh, which revealed a $22 million funding round last week. $5 million of the PayPal investment was settled using PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin. Mesh provides an aggregation service integrated with 300 exchanges, wallets and brokerages. It allows app providers to enable their users to see their balances across different digital asset exchanges and wallets.
It’s not dissimilar to open banking but for digital assets. Hence, users can additionally make payments, trade or transfer digital assets.
Other Mesh investors include Galaxy and Samsung Next.
“As the world of financial services undergoes rapid transformation, we believe that user ownership and portability of assets will become a critical building block of product innovation, with crypto serving as the first beachhead where this is possible,” said Amman Bhasin, Partner at PayPal Ventures.
“Mesh’s commitment to these principles, coupled with its innovative technology, makes them a clear leader in this dynamic landscape. We are confident that this investment will fuel Mesh’s growth and contribute significantly to the advancement of embedded finance and native stablecoins.”
After launching the PYUSD stablecoin in August, the stablecoin’s market capitalization recently surpassed $300 million. That’s less than 1% of the assets that PayPal holds on behalf of customers. While that’s a far cry from Tether’s $96 billion and USDC’s $26 billion, it’s still very early days.