BitPay announces groundbreaking Bitcoin payment partnership with PayPal
BitPay just sealed community rumors and speculation today with an announcement that the Bitcoin processing company is partnering with PayPal. BitPay posted about the first step of the partnership on its blog, and that step has been to integrate with PayPal’s Payments Hub.
Merchants using the PayPal Payments Hub can now create a BitPay merchant account and receive API credentials for the Hub. This will allow customers with bitcoin wallets to pay with bitcoin for games, music, videos, news, ebooks, and other digital content via PayPay’s system.
“We believe Bitcoin offers unique opportunities as more people and businesses experiment with it,” said Scott Ellison, PayPal’s Senior Director of Strategy. “PayPal is excited to work with BitPay to offer new experiences and the trusted service our customers expect.”
BitPay isn’t the only company that PayPal is pulling into this Bitcoin partnership, the payments company is also joining up with Coinbase and GoCoin.
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.
Analysts close to SiliconAngle point to how PayPal’s partnership with three Bitcoin industry merchant processors points to a very sanguine outlook by the e-commerce giant. With three partners, it gives PayPal the chance to see real world examples of which platform will serve best in the future.
As for the industry itself, PayPal’s partnerships mean a solid milestone on the road to mass adoption. For any sort of mainstream adoption to happen, Bitcoin needs not just startups and merchants, but also a market and ecosystem that contains mature financial companies like PayPal.
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.
As of writing, the value continues to rise.
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