> PayPal hopes its service can change that, as by settling the transaction in fiat currency, merchants will not take on the volatility risk/upside.

The whole point is that PayPal shields the business from the volatility risk. Buyer buys in Bitcoin, seller receives local fiat currency.

Ah, I read that as the opposite way around - wanting to avoid their own currency because of volatility. My bad.

Those companies only want to offer BTC as a payment option but don't want to hold crypto themselves. So they didn't really choose BTC to start with. Which makes sense since most companies need to pay their costs in fiat money.

It's the same thing as a US company wanting to sell to Europe but not wanting Euros, because they pay their costs in USD.

I think the point here is probably that Paypal is noticing that an increasing amount of consumers have crypto and would like to pay with them, so they offer this possibility.

Bitcoin is just another currency, and indeed most businesses don't want to hold them because they need to hold their local fiat. That doesn't mean consumers don't want to use Bitcoin tho.