PayPal USD on Solana Quick Start

What Is PYUSD?

PayPal USD (PYUSD) is an open, fully backed, U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin designed for payments. It was created to provide the technology suited for next-gen digital payments, along with the trust needed for today’s environments.

PYUSD offers near-instant global settlements, low to no-cost transactions, and can be integrated into apps inside and outside of the PayPal ecosystem.

PYUSD Is Built for Payments

PYUSD is available for integration and built for the next generation of payments, enabling use cases such as:  

• Cross-border P2P payments - Consumers can send PYUSD to eligible persons worldwide with a Solana wallet, and the transfer settles near-instantly and for minimal to no cost.
• B2B transfers - Using the programmable nature of PYUSD, businesses can build their own services to create near-instant, cost-effective transfers seamlessly across borders, and with relatively few technological requirements.
• Global payouts - PYUSD can reduce complexity in global payouts by eliminating the complex network of regional bank accounts, currencies, correspondent banking, and digital wallet rails.
• Microtransactions - PYUSD on Solana will enable merchant platforms to process microtransactions in real time and at a low cost. Web3 payments - PYUSD gives Web3 merchants, such as NFT marketplaces and blockchain-based gaming platforms, digitally native currencies that connect to traditional fiat bank accounts.
• Web3 payments - PYUSD gives Web3 merchants, such as NFT marketplaces and blockchain-based gaming platforms, digitally native currencies that connect to traditional fiat bank accounts.

PYUSD Is Now Available on Solana

PYUSD is now available on Solana—the high-performance blockchain network built for finance, payments, blockchain-based online gaming, and more. Solana is one of the most highly adopted blockchains, with an average of 40.7 million daily user transactions processed in Q4 2023 and an active base of over 2,500 developers.

Solana is:

• Fast, with target block times of ~400ms
• Scalable, with support of up to thousands of transactions per second
• Cost-effective, with median network fees of $0.00064 per transaction
• Designed to be available globally, 24/7

In practice, this means that PYUSD transfers on Solana settle near-instantly, with very low fees regardless of the transaction amount, can scale to very large user bases for apps, and are available to eligible persons across the globe with an internet connection.

PYUSD was built using Solana’s Token Extensions (TEs)—a token standard and set of extensions that allow the token creator to customize specifically how their token works. TEs are a program, built into the core protocol level of Solana, that provides more than a dozen audited extensions used to customize tokens.

PYUSD initializes several token extensions, including transfer hook (allows calling Solana programs with each token transfer) and permanent delegate (gives mint owner permissions needed for regulatory purposes). You can see a full list of initialized extensions in the PYUSD on Solana whitepaper.

By using TEs, PYUSD gives developers several advantages, such as:

• Reduced risk: TEs are audited and well-tested extensions that are an industry standard. By using TE, PYUSD inherits its enterprise-grade security and reliability.
• Reduced development and testing: Because TEs are reusable standards, the time required to develop and test apps (and the chances of those apps having defects) is significantly reduced.
• Enterprise ready: TEs are plug-and-play ready. They offer a fast, reliable, and proven path to adding blockchain and PYUSD to apps.
• Flexibility: TEs are an open standard, which allows PYUSD to be integrated and used not only in the PayPal ecosystem, but outside of PayPal with any compatible wallet, exchange, or library.

How To Get PYUSD

You can get PYUSD in two ways—through major wallets/exchanges and within the PayPal ecosystem.  

First, PYUSD is available for eligible persons to buy, sell, and use within the PayPal ecosystem itself, through the PayPal or Venmo wallets. PYUSD is also available on major Solana wallets and exchanges.    

When used through the PayPal ecosystem, PYUSD comes with the trusted consumer protection of PayPal.

Using PYUSD on PayPal

PYUSD can be bought by eligible persons on PayPal and Venmo using both the web and mobile apps. Simply select “Crypto'' from the main screen:

Select “Buy” and select PayPal USD (PYUSD). Enter a dollar amount, click “Buy,” and your USD will be exchanged 1:1 for an equivalent amount of PYUSD and deposited to your wallet.

With the PYUSD in your wallet, you can now:  

• Send your PYUSD to another eligible PayPal or Venmo user
• Send your PYUSD to any compatible user/wallet external to PayPal
• Convert your PYUSD to another supported crypto (for example, Bitcoin)
• Sell your PYUSD back 1:1 for USD

Integrating and Using PYUSD in Your Solana Apps

It’s also easy for developers to acquire and build with PYUSD.  

How to acquire PYUSD

For developers, test PYUSD can be acquired for building and testing apps on Solana’s Devnet through the PYUSD faucet. Note that on Solana, Devnet is the QA network meant for developers to deploy and test programs before moving to production, and Testnet is meant only for core Solana developers testing planned mainnet updates.  

And for eligible users, because PYUSD was built on the open-source code and the open standards of Solana’s TEs, it’s compatible with the Solana ecosystem in general, including a wide variety of popular wallets, marketplaces, developer tooling, and platforms. This makes PYUSD out-of-the-box widely accessible to eligible users, and a straightforward option for both merchants and customers in digital transactions.  

How to build with PYUSD

Developers can include PYUSD in their custom apps, experiment with PYUSD, and build on top of PYUSD. TEs make it straightforward to acquire, spend, and transfer PYUSD within your apps.  

You can find more information on how to integrate PYUSD (and Solana Tokens) into your apps and programs in the Solana developer documentation. You can also find more information including technical details and logo files in the PayPal developer documentation.

Get Started Today

When you build with PYUSD, you create a payment experience that is efficient, inclusive, trusted, and ready for the new era of digital commerce.  

To get started integrating PYUSD into your apps today, learn more in our whitepaper, explore the PayPal developer ecosystem, and mint test tokens on Solana Devnet.