Swap PYUSD at the Best Rate

What is PYUSD?

PYUSD is brand-name money from a payments company rather than a crypto-native project: PayPal offers it to customers, while Paxos Trust Company issues the token, holds the reserves and runs minting and redemption. Each token is redeemable for one US dollar with the issuer, which is what keeps its market price near a dollar.

PayPal announced PYUSD on 7 August 2023 and rolled it out to eligible US customers over the following weeks. The original deployment is an ERC-20 contract on Ethereum that uses six decimals, and on 29 May 2024 PayPal added a native Solana version issued by Paxos, with both shown as a single balance inside the PayPal and Venmo apps.

How PYUSD works

Paxos mints PYUSD when dollars arrive and burns it when tokens are redeemed, so the supply tracks customer demand rather than a schedule. Reserves sit in US dollar deposits, short-term US Treasuries and similar cash equivalents. Paxos self-reports the reserve composition five business days after each month ends, and an accounting firm issues a monthly attestation under AICPA standards: KPMG LLP from 28 February 2025, WithumSmith+Brown before that.

The Ethereum contract gives the issuer operational control. A separately deployed SupplyControl contract manages which addresses may mint and burn, an asset protection role can freeze any address and wipe a frozen balance, and the token sits behind an upgradeable proxy, so its logic can change without a token migration.

Who builds PYUSD

Paxos operated PYUSD under a New York Department of Financial Services limited purpose trust charter from launch until 12 December 2025, when it converted that charter into a national trust bank charter and became Paxos Trust Company, N.A., supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Paxos framed the conversion as aligning PYUSD issuance with the GENIUS Act, the US federal stablecoin framework, and PayPal remains the distribution partner rather than the issuer.

What people use PYUSD for

Inside PayPal and Venmo, PYUSD works as a checkout and peer transfer balance, while on public blockchains it settles like any other dollar stablecoin. PayPal has also pushed it toward merchant and developer payment flows.

• Paying at checkout and sending person-to-person transfers inside PayPal and Venmo.
• Moving dollars between the PayPal ecosystem and self-custody wallets on Ethereum or Solana.
• Trading and providing liquidity on decentralized exchanges.
• Settling payments where a regulated, redeemable dollar token is preferred.

PYUSD risks and considerations

PYUSD concentrates issuer and platform risk. Tokens are not bank deposits and carry no government insurance, redemption runs on Paxos and PayPal terms, and the contract lets the issuer freeze an address or wipe a frozen balance, powers that exist to satisfy regulators and law enforcement.

PYUSD is also younger and less widely integrated than the largest dollar stablecoins, so market depth differs by venue and chain. The token has expanded to additional networks over time, and every deployment is its own contract, so confirm the exact address on the network you use.