PayPal iswidely used around the world, will start accepting bitcoins soon.
“We are announcing PayPal’s first ‘engagement’ with Bitcoin,” said Bill Ready, head of eBay’s Braintree unit. During his speech at the Techcrunch Disrupt SF conference, Ready added that in the coming months, they should start accepting bitcoin transactions.
PayPal's "camouflaged" move seems to be very smart at this point. It doesn't accept the digital currency directly but through a subsidiary. This doesn't legitimize the currency, but it doesn't expose the company, at least until they get things straight. On the other hand, the company's managers probably couldn't "see" a bunch of money flowing in and not have access to it.
Braintree is a mobile and web payment processor that will partner with payment sites Coinbase and Bitcoin to process digital currency transactions. The service is already used by Uber, Airbnb and StubHub, but is available to PayPal right now.
It's a pretty exciting development, as it will make it possible for some of the fastest-growing apps to use the cryptocurrency seamlessly. It also makes it more feasible for PayPal itself to integrate Bitcoin in the near future.
For those who do not know, Braintree was purchased by eBay for 800 million dollars in 2013 in an effort by the giant company to expand the business into mobile transactions.
It should be noted that Bitcoin has started to be accepted all over the world. Governments have started to reconsider their views on the matter. Some are quite lenient, but there are still many that have banned Bitcoins outright due to their volatility.
