Payments giant PayPal experienced a significant global outage on Thursday, causing disruptions for thousands of users across multiple services.
The issue, which began at 10:53 GMT, affected key PayPal features, including account withdrawals, online checkout, its popular peer-to-peer payment service Venmo, and cryptocurrency transactions.
The company announced that the problem was fully resolved by 12:59 GMT. However, the outage created a ripple effect, with major cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Kraken reporting issues with PayPal transactions and deposit delays on their platforms.
This disruption occurred on a day of significant market activity, with Bitcoin soaring past $98,000 – its highest level to date – pulling other cryptocurrency stocks along with it. As PayPal is a major player in the cryptocurrency space, allowing users to buy, sell, and hold digital assets, the outage briefly hampered trading activity for some investors.
According to Downdetector, a platform that tracks real-time user complaints, nearly 9,000 reports of PayPal transaction issues were logged during the outage. While the incident was swiftly resolved, it served as a reminder of the critical role payment platforms play in the modern financial ecosystem.
