eBay has officially announced it is taking its first steps into the cryptocurrency space by adding BTC acceptance support to its Braintree payment subsidiary.
The announcement comes after rumors and reports of what seemed like an inevitable choice for one of the largest Ecommerce and payment companies in the world. Also, the announcement has also assured speculations that if the company were to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment; it would be through its recently acquired Braintree subsidiary.
“The reason why we were watching it up to this point is that a lot of things needed to be solved in order for us to have a leading use case. There were regulatory questions and questions over whether it would be easy for merchants and consumers to use,” Braintree CEO Bill Ready.
eBay and Braintree partnered with Bitcoin payment processor and wallet provider Coinbase to helm the digital currency acceptance aspect of the new feature.
While Braintree is not integrated with any of eBay’s primary brands, the eBay marketplace and PayPal, incorporating the feature through Braintree means leading brands which already use the payment service as provider will be able accept Bitcoin. Some of Braintree’s merchants include Airbnb, Uber, GitHub, and LivingSocial.
eBay John Donahoe has spoken out in the past that he believes PayPal and eBay will eventually have to incorporate digital currencies in the near future.
“At PayPal, we’re going to have to integrate digital currencies into our wallet,” said Donahoe in a June interview with CNBC.
In addition to upcoming Bitcoin acceptance which is said to be made available in the “Coming Months”, Braintree announced it will incorporate PayPal’s new one touch payment feature. The one-touch payment option gives users the ability to store payment and PayPal log-in details, and complete future transactions with only a single touch.
