On Tuesday (February 5th), digital asset exchange Coinbase announced its support for PayPal withdrawals for its customers in Europe.
As reported here, Coinbase first announced on 14 December 2018 that its U.S. customers could make free instant USD withdrawals to their PayPal account.
According to a blog post by Allen Osgood, a project manager at Coinbase, up to December 14th, U.S. customers needed either an ACH or a Fedwire (formerly known as the Federal Reserve Wire Network) account to withdraw fiat (USD) from their Coinbase account. Unfortunately, using such traditional financial networks means that withdrawals can take up to two business days.
However, Coinbase’s PayPal support for its U.S. customers meant that from that date they have been able to withdraw Coinbase balances instantly to PayPal without having to pay a 1.49% withdrawal fee (which they would need to pay if they were sending their money to a U.S. bank account).
To start using this new service, users needed to (1) sign in to Coinbase and link their PayPal account to their Coinbase account; and (2) select their PayPaln account as the payment option when withdrawing cash balances.
At the time, Coinbase’s blog post offered a message of hope for its customers outside the United States: it would be rolling out this service to other countries in 2019.
Well, the good news is that this feature is now available for Coinbase’s customers in Europe. More specifically, according to Coinbase’s blog post, from today, Coinbase is “expanding that support for PayPal withdrawals to all E.U. customers and customers in European Free Trade Association countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland).”
Coinbase says that prior to adding PayPal support, “SEPA and UK Faster Payments were the only options for European customers to withdraw funds.” However, this feature became available to UK customers on January 17th.
As for customers not based in the E.U, a European Free Trade Association country, or the U.S., have no fear since Coinbase once again promises to expand PayPal support during the remainder of this year to other jurisdictions.
Featured Image Courtesy of Coinbase
