YouTube has added PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin as a payout option for US creators. The choice runs through PayPal’s payout infrastructure, rather than YouTube having to directly escrow or transfer the cryptocurrency.
According to FortunePayPal crypto chief May Zabaneh confirmed the arrangement. Google and YouTube also confirmed that PYUSD has been added as a payout option for eligible creators.
The change ends up in one of the largest recurring payment streams for creators in media. YouTube has more than paid out $100 billion to makers from the past four years.
That means about $25 billion a year flows through the platform’s revenue stack. The direct impact is not that makers have to go ‘on-chain’. It is that a stablecoin is now presented as a selectable payout rail within a familiar payout workflow for some creators. It starts in the US and is opt-in.
Stablecoins are moving to regular creator payouts
Primary product documentation supports all the plumbing for that workflow, even if the PYUSD switch itself is only confirmed by Fortune. Google’s help pages state that AdSense and AdSense for YouTube can pay via PayPal Hyperwallet.
They also state that Hyperwallet is available as a payment method for US-based publishers. Additional countries are listed in some Google help streams.
According to Google documentationThe AdSense for YouTube payment process describes that earnings are spent and then made available in Hyperwallet as part of the payout process.
This is important because it ensures that cryptocurrency processing remains concentrated in a payment provider’s monitored, compliance-oriented environment. It still offers a route to external settlement for creators who want it.
PayPal’s help center explains that customers can transfer supported cryptocurrencies, including PYUSD, to external addresses. Network support details are handled within PayPal’s crypto transfer experience.
Outgoing transfers are part of the standard crypto feature set. That creates a practical bridge from a platform payout to an on-chain address without the platform having to integrate wallets.
How PYUSD converts platform payouts into on-chain, user-controlled transfers
In practice, a “PYUSD payout” can be thought of as three steps: issuing YouTube earnings, availability via Hyperwallet, and a creator-selected payout method. Google documents the first two steps through the AdSense for YouTube and Hyperwallet payout guides.
Fortune reports that the third step now includes PYUSD for US makers. If a creator chooses PYUSD and later wants to move funds out of PayPal’s custody, PayPal documents the transfer path to address on its crypto help pages.
This places the ultimate decision to leave the chain with the user rather than with the platform. The size of that distribution channel helps explain why stablecoin issuers and payments companies continue to focus on payroll-like flows.
Payouts to creators behave like long-term payments to contractors: frequent, fragmented, and often in effect internationally, even if the payer is based in the US. A stablecoin option within a mainstream payout menu does not need majority acceptance to become operationally meaningful.
It converts small percentages of a large base into recurring transaction volumes and repeated user behavior around holding, transferring or spending a token balance. PYUSD’s current footprint also makes the distribution angle more relevant than a one-time announcement.
PYUSD has a market cap of approximately $3.91 billion and a similar circulating supply, consistent with the dollar peg design. The token’s supply depth suggests that another surge in creator payouts is better framed as incremental flow and velocity rather than a short-term supply shock.
PYUSD distribution is shifting from aggregate supply to an incremental payment stream
PayPal also expanded PYUSD’s network reach, expand until Arbitrum in 2025.
That adds a new settlement environment intended to support commercial and cross-border use, in addition to previous support on other networks. Because YouTube hasn’t published a breakdown of how much of its payouts to creators are in the US, assumptions must be explicitly taken into account when determining the size.
YouTube also hasn’t published how many creators use PayPal linked rails. Using Reuters’ four-year figure of $100 billion as a starting point, the range of potential annual PYUSD payout volume depends more on opt-in behavior than on YouTube’s total payout totals.
| Scenario | Annual YouTube payouts (implicit) | US share (assumed) | Share on PayPal/Hyperwallet rails (assumed) | Sign up for PYUSD (assumed) | Implied annual PYUSD payout volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | $25 billion | 25% | 20% | 0.5% | ~$6.25 million |
| Base | $25 billion | 40% | 40% | 3% | ~$120 million |
| Aggressive | $25 billion | 60% | 70% | 10% | ~$1.05 billion |
Even in the aggressive case, the implied flow is better read as a story of habits and plumbing than as a direct market cap catalyst for a stablecoin already in the billions. Where the offering may change is in “stickiness,” meaning how long recipients hold their balance before converting or spending.
If payouts come in in PYUSD and makers treat that balance as a temporary rest point before cashing out, the incremental steady-state balance can remain modest even as the monthly flow rises.
If PayPal expands the places where PYUSD can be used within its network, or if creators choose to hold balances in tokens, the same payout volume could support higher outstanding balances.
This kind of integration is also coming as U.S. policymakers move toward clearer payments stablecoin frameworks that can connect corporate finance teams to existing controls.
Citi’s September 2025 “Stablecoins 2030” study shows stablecoin issuance increasing from about $200 billion at the start of 2025 to about $280 billion.
It also includes revised issuance projections for 2030 of $1.9 trillion in the base case and $4.0 trillion in a higher adoption case. According to Citithe extent of potential use is as dependent on settlement behavior and transaction turnover as on raw issuance.
Stablecoins move from pilot phase to regulated financial infrastructure
A competing lens is that stablecoins function economically as deposit-like liabilities that raise classical scrutiny and risk debates. That point is discussed in the Financial times.
In Washington, the direction of travel is toward codifying guardrails rather than leaving stablecoins behind in a patchwork of state money transmitter regulations and enforcement actions. Congress.gov’s summary for the GENIUS Act outlines a framework concept for who can issue stablecoins for payments and the expectations around redemption and oversight.
The bill is structured around publisher permissions and standards. The US Treasury Department has already opened a pre-announcement of proposed regulations on its implementation.
The ANPRM signals that operational details are becoming increasingly important in regulations, including the compliance and reporting expectations that large payment networks and platforms often require before they can deploy a new money rail at scale.
The Richmond Fed has done that too in summary Issuer disclosure concepts that may be important to enterprise adoption, including monthly attestations and executive certifications. Final requirements are subject to completed rules.
Against that backdrop, the YouTube-to-PYUSD option is a case study in how stablecoins can enter mainstream distribution without a platform turning itself into a crypto company.
The platform will maintain its payout relationship with an established provider, and the provider will offer a stablecoin balance as one of many payout destinations.
Creators decide whether to stop at a custodial balance, convert to fiat, or transfer to an external address. According to Fortune, that choice is now available to US creators as a PYUSD payout option within YouTube’s payout settings via PayPal’s rails.
