PayPal

PayPal is the US payments company behind PayPal and Venmo. On Solana, its main product is PayPal USD (PYUSD), a stablecoin worth one US dollar. PYUSD has been live on Solana since May 2024.

You can move PYUSD between your PayPal or Venmo account and any Solana wallet. Once it is in a wallet, you can pay with it, trade it or lend it out. US customers can also buy and sell SOL in the PayPal app. Paxos, a federally chartered trust company, issues PYUSD for PayPal.

What is PayPal USD (PYUSD) on Solana?

PYUSD is a dollar stablecoin that Paxos issues for PayPal. Each token can be redeemed for one US dollar. The reserves are held in US dollar deposits, US Treasuries and cash equivalents. Paxos publishes a report on those reserves every month.

Paxos lists seven blockchains for PYUSD. Ethereum came first and Solana second. PYUSD went live on Solana on 29 May 2024, about ten months after the Ethereum launch in August 2023.

PayPal's launch announcement gave a plain reason. Solana handles lots of transactions fast and at very low cost, which suits payments. The announcement also cited Artemis data naming Solana the most used chain for stablecoin transfers.

At launch, Phantom CASH$0.9990.0%, Crypto.com and Paxos were the first places to buy PYUSD on Solana. PayPal and Venmo users could pick Ethereum or Solana when sending PYUSD out.

That network choice matters for you. A PYUSD transfer on Solana costs a fraction of a cent and settles in seconds. Sending $20 to a friend's Phantom wallet costs about the same as sending $20,000.

PYUSD Solana address: the official mint and token extensions

The real PYUSD token on Solana has one mint address. It uses Solana's Token-2022 program:

2b1kV6DkPAnxd5ixfnxCpjxmKwqjjaYmCZfHsFu24GXo

Check this address before you buy or accept PYUSD. Other Solana tokens also call themselves "PayPal USD". Only this one can be redeemed with Paxos.

PYUSD uses token extensions, optional features built into Solana's token program. A PayPal developer post from June 2025 explains how each one is set up:

• Confidential transfers let account owners hide transfer amounts from the public, while the sender, receiver and an optional auditor can still see them.
• A permanent delegate gives the issuer unlimited authority over the token, which PayPal says allows seizing funds as required by law enforcement.
• A transfer hook can run custom code on every transfer. It is set to a null program, so it does nothing for now.
• Transfer fees are switched on but set to 0%, as a fail-safe.
• Metadata stores the name, ticker and logo on chain, so every app shows the same official details.
• A mint close authority would let the issuer close the mint account in future.

None of this changes how you send PYUSD day to day. The permanent delegate is the one to know about. It means the issuer can take PYUSD out of any Solana wallet.

How to send PYUSD or SOL from PayPal to a Solana wallet

US PayPal and Venmo users can send PYUSD from the app to an outside Solana wallet, and since April 2025 they can do the same with SOL. You need a Solana wallet address and a PayPal account with crypto enabled.

1. Open the crypto section of the PayPal or Venmo app and pick PYUSD or Solana.
2. Choose to send or transfer it out, and paste your Solana wallet address.
3. For PYUSD, choose Solana as the network. PYUSD also runs on Ethereum and other chains, and the network must match the wallet you are sending to.
4. Review the amount and confirm.

Transfers work in both directions. When you send PYUSD or SOL from a Solana wallet into PayPal, send it on the Solana network.

Once SOL sits in your own wallet, you can delegate it to a validator and earn a share of the network's inflation and fee rewards.

Can you buy Solana (SOL) with PayPal?

Yes, in the US. In April 2025 PayPal added SOL and Chainlink (LINK) to the PayPal and Venmo apps. US customers can now trade SOL inside the app and transfer it out to a wallet.

Before that, PayPal was only a way to pay on other services. The Block reported that customers could previously use PayPal to buy SOL only as a payment method on MoonPay.

PayPal's own SOL support covers US accounts. Elsewhere, people use third-party services that accept PayPal as a payment method. Another route is to buy PYUSD, send it to a Solana wallet and swap it for SOL on an exchange such as Jupiter JUP$0.257+0.7%.

PYUSD rewards and yield on Solana DeFi

PayPal pays a reward for holding PYUSD inside PayPal or Venmo. PayPal announced the program in April 2025 at an expected 3.7% a year, and its July 2025 Pay with Crypto announcement quoted 4%. The rate is variable and PayPal can change it at any time, so check the app for today's rate.

Per Venmo's help page, rewards build up on your average daily balance and are paid monthly in PYUSD. To qualify you need:

• at least $1 of PYUSD in PayPal or Venmo;
• a valid W-9 tax form;
• a US address outside New York.

Rewards may count as taxable income. Only PYUSD held in PayPal or Venmo earns them, so PYUSD in your own Solana wallet does not.

On Solana itself, yield comes from DeFi apps, often boosted by incentive programs, some of them funded by PayPal. In August 2024, The Block reported that PYUSD supply on Solana had passed Ethereum's within three months of launch. The fall was just as fast. When incentive yields on lenders such as Kamino Finance KMNO$0.028-7.6% dropped, Blockworks found Solana supply had roughly halved in a month.

A second wave came in late 2025. DL News reported in December 2025 that PYUSD on Solana grew from about $250 million to over $1 billion in three months. Kamino was paying close to 6% on PYUSD lending at the time, partly subsidised by PayPal.

In September 2026, Kamino added a PYUSD vault to Binance Wallet's DeFi tab. DeFi rates on PYUSD move with these incentive programs, so a past rate says little about the next one.

PayPal Pay with Crypto for merchants

Pay with Crypto lets US merchants on PayPal take payment from a shopper's crypto wallet. PayPal announced it in July 2025. It supports more than 100 cryptocurrencies and wallets such as Coinbase cbBTC$64,275.01-4.5% and MetaMask.

PayPal converts the payment when it arrives, so the merchant receives stablecoins or dollars. At launch PayPal set an introductory fee of 0.99% that ran until 31 July 2026. It said the service can cut costs by up to 90% compared with international card processing.

For a small online shop, this means a customer paying in SOL from a Solana wallet arrives as dollars, with no crypto treasury to manage.

PYUSD vs USDC on Solana

USDC, issued by Circle USDC$1.000+0.0%, is the default dollar on Solana. PYUSD is the better fit if your money already lives in PayPal or Venmo. Both are fully backed dollar stablecoins from regulated issuers.

The main differences are where you can use them and how easy they are to trade:

USDC is by far the larger of the two on Solana. More pools and more apps accept it, so large swaps usually cost less in USDC.

Tether USDT$0.999+0.0%'s USDT is the other large alternative on Solana. PYUSD's edge over both is the direct link to PayPal's consumer apps. Since April 2025, Coinbase customers can also buy, sell and redeem PYUSD 1:1 with no platform fees.

Who PayPal on Solana suits

PayPal's Solana products suit people who already use PayPal or Venmo. If you hold dollars in PayPal, PYUSD is the shortest path to a Solana wallet. You don't need an exchange account in between.

They also suit:

• US PayPal users who want to buy SOL with a familiar app before moving it to their own wallet.
• Small US merchants who want to accept crypto but be paid in dollars.
• Developers building payment apps that need a regulated dollar with a consumer brand behind it.

The catch is where you live. SOL in the PayPal app and the PYUSD reward are US products. New York residents can't get the reward. Since March 2026, PayPal offers PYUSD in 70 markets, but rewards vary by region and are not offered in the UK or Singapore.

Is PYUSD safe? Issuer control and the Paxos minting error

PYUSD is regulated and fully backed, and one company controls it. You rely on Paxos to hold the reserves and pay out redemptions. Paxos can also take tokens out of a wallet.

Paxos became a national trust bank on 12 December 2025. Since then, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has supervised the Paxos entity that issues PYUSD. Paxos says customer assets are kept in separate accounts, protected if Paxos itself fails.

The risks to weigh:

• Issuer control. The permanent delegate on Solana lets the issuer seize or burn PYUSD from any wallet, for example on a law-enforcement order.
• Operational error. On 15 October 2025, Paxos mistakenly minted 300 trillion PYUSD on Ethereum during an internal transfer and burned it shortly after. Paxos called it an internal technical error, with no security breach.
• Incentive-driven liquidity. PYUSD supply on Solana has doubled and halved within months as DeFi incentives changed, so pool depth can thin out quickly.
• Impostor tokens. Several Solana tokens copy the "PayPal USD" name. Only the mint address above is the real one.
• Reward terms. PayPal sets the reward rate at its own discretion and can cut or end it. PayPal's April 2025 announcement states that PYUSD and the rewards program are not bank deposits and are not FDIC insured.

PayPal has no program of its own on Solana to audit. PYUSD runs on Solana's standard Token-2022 program. Control sits with the keys that can mint tokens and act as the permanent delegate.

PayPal and Solana timeline

PYUSD keeps showing up in new payment tools. In October 2026, Polygon Labs added Solana to its Open Money Stack. Businesses can use it to move PYUSD and other stablecoins to and from Solana.