Litecoin is the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and it is often considered the silver of the cryptocurrency market since Bitcoin appears to be the gold standard. The Litecoin Project is potentially one of the projects that could power the mass-market adoption of cryptocurrencies because it is a lighter, faster, and scalable variant of Bitcoin.

In this guide, I’ll respond to one of the oldest and biggest questions in the cryptocurrency market; How can I buy Litecoin with PayPal? Over the past several years, the idea of buying Litecoin with PayPal has become a recurrent theme in crypto forums, Telegram channels, and Reddit discussions.

Here’s why it’s difficult to buy Litecoin with PayPal

PayPal, founded in 1998 is a global online payment solution. When it launched, it was at the frontier of innovation in powering digital payments; hence, it only makes sense that people should be able to buy Litecoin with PayPal instead of using traditional payment solutions such as debit cards, bank wires, or direct debits. More so, many people who are active in the digital economy already receive and send payments through PayPal, life would be easy if there was a way to buy Litecoin with PayPal.

However, buying Litecoin with PayPal is akin to passing a camel through the biblical needle’s eye. You’ll find it easier to buy Litecoin with credit cards rather than with PayPal. A solid 10 years after the first Bitcoin transaction and there’s still no way to buy Litecoin with PayPal directly. PayPal has a reputation of running closed ecosystems and making it difficult to get funds out of PayPal into other financial services solutions. PayPal seems to prefer users to stay within its powered ecosystems such as eBay instead of facilitating the transfer of such funds to third-party payment solutions.

Also, many cryptocurrency exchanges don’t support the integration that would have made it possible to buy Litecoin with PayPal. The mean reason for the lack of this integration is that PayPal has a Buyer Protection policy that tends to side with the buyer while mandating merchants to issue a refund if a customer complains about the product/service purchased. Since crypto transactions are irreversible, dishonest folks could buy Litecoin with PayPal and then turn around to dispute the purchase in the hopes of forcing an unfair refund. Hence, many crypto exchanges have chosen not to implement PayPal payments for cryptocurrencies.

The worst part is that other solutions take a long and circuitous route that requires you to use PayPal to buy Bitcoin on a P2P exchange. You’ll then transfer the Bitcoin to a crypto exchange. You’ll then use the Bitcoin to purchase Litecoin from the exchange.

Every step, starting with the p2p exchange if fraught with risk, is stressful, time-consuming, and forces you to buy Litecoin at a significant premium over the market price because of the long list of transaction charges that you’ll rack up along the way.

Here’s a better alternative for buying Litecoin without stress

Skrill, founded in 2001 is a global financial services company and only about 3 years younger than PayPal. Skrill is incorporated as a part of the PaySafe Group it has demonstrated almost two decades of experience and expertise in developing global payment solutions to power the digital economy. Skrill is headquartered in London, it has offices throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Skrill entered the cryptocurrency space in 2018 as part of its commitment to making digital payments simple. The company leverages its existing operational rails to provide tools to buy and sell cryptos with a dedicated crypto tab.

If you’ve unsuccessfully tried to buy Litecoin with PayPal and you are tired of the hassle, you should consider Skrill. Simply put, Skrill offers a simple solution for buying and selling Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies with alternative payment methods. Skrill allows users to buy Litecoin instantly starting with a simple account opening process that doesn’t require additional verification.

After opening a Skrill account, the next step is to fund it. You can fund your Skrill Wallet with traditional payment methods such as debit cards or bank transfers. However, if you were looking for how to buy Litecoin with PayPal, you probably won’t be interested in the traditional payment options. 

Now, this is the part why Skrill is a better alternative – you can fund your account with more than 100 alternative payment methods and even though it doesn’t list PayPal, you can find other ways to pay for Litecoin without going through your bank.

Once you’ve funded your Skrill account, you can navigate over to the crypto tab again to buy Litecoin instantly. Scroll down the list of available cryptocurrencies to see Litecoin (LTC) on the page. The page contains additional information such as the current trading price of Litecoin (in your currency) its 24-hour price change, and a “Trade” button to buy or sell Litecoin.

You’ll need to click on trade, which will lead to you to the next screen where you’ll input how much of the funds in your account you want to spend on buying Litecoin. Once you enter how much money you want to spend, the system automatically shows the amount of Litecoin you’ll get in exchange based on the market price at the time of your trade.

If you continue with the trade, the next screen with show a summary of your order. You’ll proceed if the order details are correct, and that’s it! 

Conclusion

There’s currently no official way to buy Litecoin with PayPal and the available workarounds are stressful, time-consuming, and expensive. Nonetheless, cryptocurrencies are here to stay and maybe PayPal will change its policies towards them down the road. Of course, changing such polices will lead to some operational adjustments that will make it easy to buy Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies.

In the meantime, solutions like Skrill’s, provide an easy way to buy and sell Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies with alternative payment methods. Here’s to hoping that the traditional financial institutions don’t take too long before they integrate cryptocurrencies into their products and services.