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Andy Watson
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PayPal has announced partnerships with three major payment processors in the bitcoin space – BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin.
PayPal Inc. today announced partnerships with three major Bitcoin payment processors: BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin.
Scott Ellison, PayPal’s senior director of corporate strategy, said in the announcement on a blog post: “Today we are announcing PayPal’s next step in helping merchants accept Bitcoin payments. PayPal has entered into agreements with leading Bitcoin payment processors BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin.”
He continued: “We chose to work with BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin because of our commitment to offering innovative and safer ways for businesses to accept payments.”
“All three companies have taken steps to ensure that they know their customers and that those customers are offered certain protections. We believe digital goods merchants will be excited to work with these industry-leading companies to sell ringtones, games and music and get paid with Bitcoin.”
To start, Bitcoin payments integration will be available via PayPal’s Payments Hub to PayPal online merchants in North America, that is, with the exception of pre-sellers – merchants who ask for payment in advance for a product or service it will later provide.
Mr. Ellison told Forbes the reason for the partnership between Bitcoin processors and PayPal is because, “Merchants were asking for Bitcoin integrations.”
This move comes after what seems like months of speculations of PayPal’s slow shift from appearing wary of cryptocurrencies towards adopting Bitcoin outright.
First it was David Marcus, then President of PayPal, saying “We’re kinda thinking about it,” in reference to Bitcoin in 2013. Then in early September, eBay Inc.’s payment processing subsidiary Braintree (PayPal is also an eBay held unit) announced soon-to-come bitcoin acceptance.
PayPal is available in 193 markets and 26 currencies. With 143 million active registered accounts and $6.6bn in revenue at the end of 2013, the e-commerce giant brings the potential for new users and new business to the bitcoin economy.
Bitcoin Market Value Jumps Nearly $50
Friday saw the Bitcoin market index value tumble after the announcement of Alibaba Group Holding Limited’s IPO by approximately $42.
Now that the announcement came down the pipe about PayPal partnering with BitPay, Coinbase, and GoCoin the market value has begun to surge, already regaining the entire loss and then some having shot up to peak near $452 since this morning at just below $400.
