Braintree, a subsidiary of PayPal and eBay, is in now negotiating with Coinbase about the future bitcoin integration.
According to a Wall Street Journal, a subsidiary of eBay and PayPal, payments firm Braintree, is now engaged in negotiations with Coinbase and other payment processing companies on possible integration of bitcoin.
Braintree is currently providing its payments software for such mobile applications as room-bookings firm Airbnb, car service Uber and GitHub. The firm was purchased by PayPal in December 2013 for $800 million. At the time the company’s processing capacity totaled $12 billion per year with $4 billion through mobile applications.
Bitcoin integration by Braintree will be a major step in the development of bitcoin. The move would increase the credibility of bitcoin, which is still negatively viewed by many companies.
A number of large-scale companies are already accepting bitcoin for goods and services, among others online retailer Overstock.com and television provider DISH Network.
John Donahoe, eBay CEO, have always expressed interest in digital currencies and even considered the addition of bitcoin “inevitable”.
In his interview to CNBC in June, he told: “I think there’s no doubt digital currency is going to play an important role going forward, and at PayPal, we’re going to have to integrate digital currencies into our wallet.”
Still, there hasn’t been any comments from eBay on whether they themselves will be accepting bitcoin any time soon.
eBay spokeswoman Jennifer Hakes said: “We do believe that Bitcoin will play an important role in payments in the future, but we have nothing to announce.”
Anyway, Braintree new option demonstrates that two giants also could accept the cryptocurrency in the future.
Uber and Airbnb have some similar points with bitcoin. Both companies have been praised by supporters in the technology sector for their disruption of the taxi and hotel industry, although they have also faced opposition from certain participants in those segments.
Thus, in April 2014, in San Francisco the housing activist Calvin Welch, former city planning commissioner Doug Engmann and public relations professional Dale Carlson supported the initiative that was expected to restrict short-term rentals to neighborhoods with commercial zoning, create insurance requirements, require permission from landlords or homeowners associations and reward tipsters who inform on hosts avoiding the rules.
Due to the partnership with PayPal and eBay, Braintree now provides its services for 40 countries and includes 130 currencies.
Founded by Bryan Johnson in 2007, Braintree received $34 million investment from Accel Partners in 2011 and $35 million from NEA in 2012.
The company provides solutions for online businesses to accept credit card payments from their sites and apps, supplying merchant account and payment processor.
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