Skrill, a leading payments service and digital wallet, part of the Paysafe Group, has recently added cryptocurrency buy and sell options to its platform for users in over 30 countries. Initially, the service will support bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, and litecoin.
Notably Skrill, formerly Moneybookers, offers support for over 40 fiat currencies, and launched its Skrill Cryptocurrency Service via an unnamed “recognized cryptocurrency exchange” that’ll hold the cryptocurrencies for it.
This means that initially users will only be able to buy and sell interest in cryptocurrencies, but won’t own the cryptos themselves. As such, sending crypto holdings or paying with cryptocurrencies isn’t an option for now, although Skrill noted it’s adding these features in the future.
Nevertheless, Skrill touted its service’s ease of use in a press release, noting that “all users need to do is log into their account, select ‘Exchange’ and in just a couple of clicks they can begin buying, holding, and selling cryptocurrency.”
Skrill and NETELLER CEO Lorenzo Pellegrino was quoted as saying:
The world of cryptocurrency trading is exciting and dynamic, and our digital wallet service very much lends itself to this environment. I’m confident that the ability to trade in cryptocurrencies quickly and easily through Skrill will appeal to consumers both now and in the future.
Pellegrino added that the company believes a lot of people “want to experiment with cryptocurrency trading,” but don’t know where to start doing so. As such, he said, the company “made the entire process very straightforward.”
The service is set to be released to the company’s mobile app and Paysafe’s NETELLER digital wallet “in the next few months.” Its move comes at a time in which an increasing number of traditional financial services providers are entering the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Zero-fee trading app Robinhood launched Robinhood Crypto earlier this year, and has since been expanding throughout the US, after raising $363 million at a $5.6 billion valuation in a funding round.
The company’s CEO, Baiju Bhatt, has said that sovereign nations will adopt cryptocurrencies as “their default currencies at some point.” Robinhood is reprotedly in talks with regulators to offer banking services.
Goldman Sachs-backed payments firm Circle, which earlier this year acquired Poloniex for $400 million, has also revealed it was pursuing a license with the OCC last month. It has recently launched a trading app for the exchange. Square’s Cash app also started offering bitcoin buy and sell options to its users. In May, CryptoGlobe reported it earned $200,000 from the service, without charging fees.
