YouTube lets creators withdraw earnings in PayPal PYUSD stablecoin

The new payout method is live for American creators who use PayPal to receive their YouTube revenue and allows them to opt into PYUSD instead of traditional dollar balances. The feature follows PayPal’s rollout of PYUSD as a payout option for payment recipients earlier this year and extends that functionality to YouTube’s creator ecosystem.

YouTube itself is not holding or managing crypto on behalf of users. Instead, PayPal provides the stablecoin infrastructure, with creators able to select PYUSD as the asset they receive when their YouTube payouts are processed. From there, they can keep PYUSD in their PayPal-linked wallet, convert it to dollars, or send it on-chain, depending on the services available to them.

Industry participants say the integration reflects the growing use of stablecoins as a payment rail rather than as a speculative trading asset. For creators, a key draw is the potential for near-instant settlement and reduced friction when sending funds across borders compared with traditional bank transfers, which can be slower and more expensive.

Jakob Kronbichler, CEO and co-founder of on-chain credit platform Clearpool, noted that large platforms generally only add new payment rails when they are “operationally mature and low-friction,” arguing that PayPal’s infrastructure lets companies and users “access the benefits of on-chain settlement without introducing new custody or compliance challenges.”

Vedang Vatsa, founder of global crypto community Hashtag Web3, described the setup as YouTube effectively outsourcing the technical complexity to PayPal while giving creators an extra payout choice. He suggested other major platforms could adopt a similar pattern as they experiment with stablecoins and blockchain-based payments.

The timing also lines up with a shift in the U.S. policy environment. In July, President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, establishing a dedicated federal framework for dollar-backed stablecoins. The law is being viewed in the industry as a trigger for more institutional and corporate adoption of stablecoin-based payment systems.

Rohan Kohli, chief risk and compliance officer at infrastructure firm Bastion, said the law provides the “regulatory clarity” that companies had been waiting for, arguing that a clear federal regime should support institutional confidence and competition in the stablecoin sector.

The broader market is still in an early growth phase. Total stablecoin capitalization recently climbed to just above $313 billion, while more than 80% of users on prediction platform Myriad Markets do not expect the sector to surpass $360 billion in value by February, underscoring expectations for gradual rather than explosive expansion.

PYUSD itself launched in August 2023 as a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin issued by PayPal on public blockchains. Its market capitalization has now risen above $3 billion, and PayPal has been integrating it into its own products, including bill-pay tools for merchants and its Hyperwallet service for mass payouts. In September, PYUSD expanded to nine additional networks via LayerZero, extending support beyond Ethereum to blockchains such as Aptos, Avalanche and Tron.

Regulatory scrutiny around the asset has also begun to settle. Earlier this year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a probe into PYUSD, removing a potential overhang for PayPal’s stablecoin strategy at the same time as lawmakers advanced federal legislation for the sector.

Taken together, YouTube’s new payout option, PayPal’s ongoing product integrations and the GENIUS Act’s federal framework show stablecoins being woven into mainstream payments infrastructure rather than confined to trading platforms, with U.S. creators now among the first large user groups to interact with PYUSD in their everyday earnings.