By
Steve Muchoki
December 8th, 2023
eBay CEO John Donahoe considers bitcoin integration into its payment system is inevitable.
John Donahoe, CEO and president of the online store eBay and its subsidiary PayPal, has once again hinted that the company is going to integrate bitcoin into its PayPal payment system.
The company has already showed its interest in bitcoin. Earlier, eBay has filed a patent application to accept the virtual currency.
Moreover, Donahoe has declared that the firm is considering the possibility of accepting the digital currency at the eBay shareholders meeting, which took place in May.
In his new interview on CNBC, eBay CEO once again talked about the company’s plans to incorporate virtual money.
He said: “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.”
Donahoe did not give information about the dates when the users can start making bitcoin payments. He noted that the digital currency is likely to facilitate trading on PayPal and eBay.
He said: “I think you’ll see bitcoin used in different use cases, whether it’s a peer-to-peer use case, a cross-border transaction – someone’s sending currency to someone else, and over time, you’ll start to see it with some merchants accepting bitcoin.”
In his interview, Donahoe also discussed the recent issue with Amazon, a major book publisher. Although it was not related to bitcoin, his comments showed that one of the reasons why eBay intends to integrate the digital currency is that Amazon and Apple are not willing to associate with bitcoin.
Donahoe added: “What ebay represents is opportunity for small sellers. […] eBay, from its very beginning, took entrepreneurs, took small businesses, and now also some large businesses, can give them an equal playing field to reach 140 million buyers around the world.”
He added: ‘For me, I’m not buying it as an investment, I’m buying it to understand how it can be used. I think there are two sides of it: The investment side and then the digital currency side and I’m more interested in the digital currency side about how you and I can exchange value seamlessly using technology.’
While more traders start using bitcoin today, the new function is likely to increase the number of eBay customers.
eBay has not embraced bitcoin officially like such e-commerce companies Overstock and TigerDirect did. Still, it made bitcoin available for use on the firm’s website and only for particular cases.
For instance, eBay’s site introduced digital currency categories where merchants can facilitate peer-to-peer bitcoin selling and purchasing.
The move was taken after eBay users tried to exchange their digital currency via the company’s online platform, but their postings were deleted as it did not comply with the firm’s policy.
The decision to accept bitcoin is a huge step for eBay and PayPal as it will be easier for similar services to integrate bitcoin as a legitimate currency.