PayPal survey in October 2025: 40% of merchants already accept crypto, led by large enterprises, 85% expect crypto payments to be commonplace by 2030, and more
Partner offers — Quick Take — Four in 10 surveyed merchants said they already accept crypto at checkout …
Context & Ripple Effects
PayPal has spent years moving from crypto trading in its wallets toward merchant checkout: it said customers could use crypto at millions of merchants in 2021, then introduced Pay With Crypto for merchant checkout in 2025. The survey provides a merchant-side readout on that longer rollout.
The reported adoption is concentrated among large enterprises, making the result more meaningful as evidence of payments-platform integration than as a measure of universal small-business adoption. It also gives PayPal a basis to position crypto acceptance as a mainstream checkout capability rather than a niche wallet feature.
First-order effects
- Among surveyed merchants, crypto checkout is already an active acceptance option for 40%, with large enterprises leading; payment teams must support the associated checkout, settlement, and customer-service workflows.
- PayPal’s merchant crypto offering gains validation from a customer segment it is targeting, following its earlier crypto-funded checkout rollout to online merchants.
Second-order effects
- Payment processors and wallet providers serving large merchants face more pressure to offer crypto-payment integrations or risk leaving an acceptance gap for merchants that want broader wallet choice.
- The enterprise skew may concentrate early demand in platforms that can absorb integration and compliance complexity, while smaller merchants wait for simpler, lower-friction implementations.
Third-order effects
- If stated merchant expectations translate into deployment, crypto payments could become another configurable rail within large-platform checkout stacks rather than a standalone retail category.
- The lasting competitive question shifts from whether merchants can accept crypto to which regulated platforms control conversion, settlement, and the economics of the transaction.
The trend: Crypto payments are progressing from consumer wallet functionality toward enterprise checkout infrastructure controlled by major payment platforms.