With Its Deal for Curv, PayPal Tightens Security for Its Push Into Cryptocurrency

Building on its strategy to support cryptocurrency, PayPal Holdings Inc. announced Monday that it has agreed to acquire Curv Inc., a provider of cloud-based infrastructure for digital-asset security, for an undisclosed sum.

Once the acquisition is completed later this year, Tel Aviv, Israel-based Curv will become part of a PayPal business unit formed in October to focus on blockchain, crypto, and digital-currency offerings. 

Curv’s Institutional Digital Asset Wallet Service is a cloud-based product aimed at cryptocurrency exchanges, brokers, and over-the-counter trading desks that allows access to crypto wallets without a hardware device.

With Curv, wallet holders can set custom spending rules that govern how and when funds can be transferred to and from their wallets. Wallet holders can also specify which users, groups, and machines can approve different transactions and maintain lists of preapproved destinations. In addition, Curv provides an audit log of who signed and initiated the transaction, the policy steps taken, and who approved the transaction and when. 

The security that Curv provides around digital-currency assets buttresses PayPal’s strategy to allow its accountholders to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency directly from their account. PayPal also said it will make cryptocurrency available as a funding source for purchases at merchants accepting PayPal. Curv was founded in 2018 by chief executive Itay Malinger and chief technology officer Dan Yadlin.

“PayPal is clearly trying to weave cryptocurrencies, which are sizzling hot, into its already-compelling payments network growth story,” Eric Grover, principal at Minden, Nev.-based payments-advisory Intrepid Ventures says by email. “To the extent Curv enhances PayPal’s ability to better support cryptocurrencies, some of which will fund retail and [peer-to-peer] payments, it will increase the size of the network and create value.”