PayPal has announced that U.S. merchants can now buy, hold, and sell digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum from their business accounts.

U.S. merchants will also be able to externally transfer cryptocurrency on chain to third-party eligible wallets, the company said in a Wednesday release.

The payments giant said it made the move came because business owners wanted it.

"Business owners have increasingly expressed a desire for the same cryptocurrency capabilities available to consumers," said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal's senior vice president of blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital currencies.

The feature will not be available in the state of New York at launch, PayPal said.

PayPal has made inroads into the crypto industry over the years, first allowing customers to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital coins in 2020, and then launching its own stablecoin, PYUSD, last year.

The token, which runs on both the Ethereum and Solana networks, is the 109th biggest digital asset,with a market cap of over $712 million, according to CoinGecko. As a stablecoin, it is pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar.

Earlier this year, PayPal announced that users could swap PYUSD for dollars to make international payments via payments platform Xoom.

Edited by Andrew Hayward