PayPal Will Accept Bitcoin

bitcoins

World’s Second-Biggest Internet Payment Network – PayPal – Will Accept Bitcoin (Washington’s Blog, Sep 9, 2014):

Bitcoin Is Going Mainstream

We’ve previously noted that Reddit, Virgin Galactic, Overstock.com, two big Las Vegas hotels, a Congressman, and many businesses now accept Bitcoin. So does Dish Networks.

But a huge shift just occurred, which virtually guarantees that Bitcoin will become a normal payment method. Specifically, PayPal has just announced that it will accept Bitcoin.

Bloomberg reports:

PayPal … will start accepting bitcoins, opening up the world’s second-biggest Internet payment network to virtual currency transactions. [The largest is Chinese-owned AlipayBackground.]

“We’re announcing PayPal’s first foray into bitcoin,” Bill Ready, the chief of EBay’s Braintree unit, said at Techcrunch’s Disrupt SF conference yesterday. “Over the coming months we’ll allow our merchants to accept bitcoin. On the consumer side it will be a sleek experience.”

EBay [the parent company of PayPal], as the world’s biggest Web marketplace and operator of a global payments service, is the most significant business to date that’s embraced bitcoin. The move could potentially enable PayPal’s 152 million registered accounts to transact using the virtual currency, spurring wider use and acceptance of bitcoin …

Bitcoin might be a revolutionary game-changer … or a Trojan horse for the powers-that-be. But one thing is for sure: with PayPal’s acceptance of Bitcoin, the virtual currency will become a common payment system.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.