Kraken
- User-friendly interface, suitable for beginners
- It offers crypto, NFTs, and real U.S. stocks in one account
17 of the 80 exchanges we track accept PayPal deposits, ranked by CWR Score. The list below is checked against your country.
Exchanges with a CWR Score of 7 or higher and no security incident in the last 12 months.Every exchange that accepts PayPal.Exchanges licensed under the EU’s MiCA rules.
Pick a different country above, or browse all reviews.
Also accepting PayPal, but restricted in your country: Kraken, Bitvavo, Bitunix, OKX EU, Coinbase, Bybit EU, Zoomex, Bitstamp, Gemini, dYdX, Bitpanda, Uphold, Paybis, MEXC, LBank, Margex, eToro,
PayPal is a digital wallet and online payment network run by PayPal Holdings, Inc. You can hold a balance, link bank accounts and cards, and check out at a merchant through a single login without handing your card details to the seller. With more than 400 million active account holders worldwide, it’s one of the largest checkout and money-transfer platforms around.
Paying a crypto exchange with PayPal means you authenticate in a PayPal window and PayPal pushes the money from whichever source you pick. There’s no card number to type and no bank reference to copy across. The name on your PayPal account has to match the name on your exchange account, and crypto purchases don’t get PayPal’s Buyer Protection, so treat a completed payment as final.
The list at the top of this page shows the exchanges that accept it.
PayPal is run by PayPal Holdings, Inc. It was founded in 1998, originally as Confinity, merged with X.com in 2000, and was acquired by eBay in 2002. It was spun off as an independent public company in 2015.
The crypto side came later. In October 2020 PayPal let US customers buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash directly in their wallets, and in 2021 it added the option to spend crypto at merchants. In August 2023 it launched its own US-dollar stablecoin, PayPal USD, on Ethereum, later expanding it to Solana. Topper, PayPal’s white-label on-ramp product, is what lets third-party platforms take PayPal as a funding method.
PayPal runs its own in-app crypto hub, which is a separate product from using PayPal to fund an outside exchange account. US and US-territory customers can buy, sell, hold, and transfer Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Solana, Chainlink, and PayPal USD. UK customers get the same list. Outside the US and UK, only PayPal USD is available. You can buy from as little as $1 (or £1 in the UK).
You can also spend a crypto balance at any merchant that takes PayPal checkout, with the coin converted to fiat at the point of sale. The crypto service is for personal accounts only; business accounts aren’t eligible.
The steps are much the same wherever you pay with PayPal.
How fast the money lands depends on the funding source. A payment from a PayPal balance or a linked debit card is treated as effectively instant, so it usually reaches your exchange account within minutes. A payment pulled from a bank account runs over ACH and can take one to three business days to settle, and some venues wait for that before crediting you.
Weekends, bank cut-off times, and first-time verification checks can all add delay. A first payment on a new account is the one most likely to be held while checks run.
PayPal doesn’t charge you a fee to fund a standard purchase from your balance or a bank transfer. Its Instant Transfer option to a linked debit card carries a 1.75% fee, with a minimum of $0.25 and a maximum of $25. Where a currency conversion is involved, PayPal applies a spread that refreshes often.
An exchange may add its own charge on top, such as a deposit fee or a wider price on an instant buy. The way to see the real cost is to read the total on the confirmation screen before you commit, since that figure includes anything the exchange has added.
PayPal will offer you whatever you have attached, but not every source is allowed for a crypto purchase. A PayPal balance and a linked bank account are the two that are almost always accepted. A debit card is usually accepted. A credit card and PayPal Credit are usually not, because card schemes treat crypto as a cash-equivalent purchase and PayPal blocks the combination rather than manage the risk.
The source you pick changes how fast the money moves. Balance and card are effectively instant to PayPal. A bank pull can take 1 to 3 business days to settle behind the scenes, and some venues wait for that settlement before crediting you.
If the payment is declined without an obvious reason, the funding source is the first thing to change. Switching from a card to the balance resolves a large share of failures.
Deposit support and withdrawal support are separate decisions, and plenty of venues offer the first without the second. A venue that lets you fund with PayPal may still send your money out only by bank transfer or card refund, which means the account you withdraw to has to exist and be verified before you need it.
Check the withdrawal methods on the venue’s own page before you rely on PayPal as an exit route. If it is not listed there, assume it is deposit-only.
Since the exchanges that take PayPal differ in the details, compare a few things before you commit. Look at the total cost shown before you confirm, not just the coin price. Check how long account verification takes, and whether you can withdraw back to PayPal or only by another route. Confirm the exchange lists the coins you want to buy, and look at its security record.
The list at the top of this page shows the exchanges that accept PayPal, so start there and work through the rest.
Yes. The name on the PayPal account has to match the name on the exchange account. A payment from someone else’s wallet will normally be blocked or held, and unwinding it is slow.
Generally no. Credit cards and PayPal Credit are usually blocked for crypto, so the purchase has to come from your balance, a linked bank account, or a debit card.
Sometimes. Some venues support payouts to PayPal, but many treat it as deposit-only. Check the withdrawal methods on the venue you pick rather than assuming the deposit route works in reverse.
You cannot. Crypto is excluded from PayPal’s Buyer Protection and completed purchases are not cancelled, so check the amount and the venue before you confirm.
The funding source is the first thing to change. Switching from a card to your PayPal balance clears a large share of declines, and a payment that comes from someone else’s account will be stopped.
Use a method the venue does support; a bank transfer or a debit card is the usual alternative and is accepted far more widely. The list above shows what’s available before you open an account.