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Coinbase continues to explore customer benefits with the addition of a PayPal facility

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At a glance, this could be an article from 2016. It was back then when Coinbase announced that they were adding PayPal and credit card withdrawal services to US accounts for the first time.

However back in March, the exchange withdrew PayPal support, citing technical issues. At the time, a Reddit post stated, “While we originally intended to disable PayPal after two weeks, technical difficulties made it necessary for us to keep the integration offline longer than we intended. We are sorry for any inconvenience this caused.” However, the post went on to say that they would look at reintroducing this later in 2018.

Well, they kept their word. Sure enough, Coindesk published excerpts from an interview with a Coinbase spokesperson, and from Allen Osgood, who works on Coinbase products. The spokesperson explained that new technical work in conjunction with PayPal had made the return of service a possibility. Meanwhile, Osgood explained that it was important for the firm to re-establish a link with PayPal, for the sake of customers wanting swift access to their funds: “These traditional finance networks can add up to two business days to a withdrawal. We’re always looking for ways to not only meet the bar set by traditional finance but raise it. That’s why we rebuilt our integration to ensure that the speed and reliability of PayPal withdrawals does just that.”

As with 2016, Coinbase has only introduced the facility to US customers. However, they have promised to work on rolling out this functionality to other countries in 2019. While this move makes good on their promise from earlier in the year, it also comes at a time when investors in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are anxiously trying to squeeze every last bit of available value out of their crypto holdings. This can often involve increased trading and selling, with lower levels of buying. For this to be effective, there is inevitably an increased demand for funds to be immediately available for withdrawal, so Coinbase has solved their technical issues at a really crucial time.

Among Coinbase’s other plans to make assets more accessible to everyone through their platform, the company announced that they were exploring new options last week (December 7th).

The blog post outlined that these assets were: Cardano (ADA), Eternity (AE), Aragon (ANT), Bread Wallet (BRD), Civic (CVC), Dai (DAI), district0x (DNT), EnjinCoin (ENJ), EOS (EOS), Golem Network (GNT), IOST (IOST), Kin (KIN), Kyber Network (KNC), ChainLink (LINK), Loom Network (LOOM), Loopring (LRC), Decentraland (MANA), Mainframe (MFT), Maker (MKR), NEO (NEO), OmiseGo (OMG), Po.et (POE), QuarkChain (QKC), Augur (REP), Request Network (REQ), Status (SNT), Storj (STORJ), Stellar (XLM), XRP (XRP), Tezos (XTZ), and Zilliqa (ZIL).

Coinbase has also been using the festive period as an opportunity to generate publicity, with the 12 Days of Coinbase. These have included, so far, charitable donations, the introduction of a new crypto “watchlist” for customers and e-gift card compatibility.

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