If PayPal’s video hinting at Bitcoin acceptance wasn’t enough for the cryptocurrency community, it looks like Braintree will soon be rolling out Bitcoin integration into their One Touch iOS and Android application. The app allows payments to be made swiftly and easily with the user’s cell phone, just the same as Bitcoin.
For those who may not know, PayPal is the mother company of Braintree. What was once seen as a battle between Bitcoin and PayPal has now been cleared as a partnership, as PayPal is showing public support for the move.
It was announced at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco that the One Touch app would become available. Shortly after, author Bill Ready of a Braintree announcement wrote this:
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“While we’re focused on giving people more seamless buying experiences, we’re also fierce advocates of giving merchants, and in turn their customers, flexibility and the freedom of choice. That’s why today, we also announced that we’ll enable our customers to easily accept bitcoin in the coming months via a partnership with Coinbase – a trusted, high quality bitcoin payment processor with 1.6M consumer wallets and 36,000 merchants globally.”
The move is exciting for the Bitcoin community, but users were turned upside-down to see a tweet from PayPal coupled with the announcement on their website.
Our One Touch #tech and #Bitcoin integration enables a more seamless and secure payment experience: http://t.co/iLORJ3gPGd . #paypalit
— PayPal (@PayPal) September 8, 2014
The tweet struck the community like lightening. PayPal is an enormous name in the financial world, and such public support for Bitcoin is nearly unprecedented. For the hat trick, Coinbase also made their announcement, explaining the partnership to prospective Bitcoin merchants.
“Braintree merchants using Coinbase will receive all the benefits associated with accepting bitcoin payments, including 1% flat transaction fees (waived for the first $1M in bitcoin sales) with no additional costs, all while avoiding exposure to any currency volatility risk thanks to Coinbase’s Instant Exchange feature.”
PayPal Gives Life Back To Bitcoin Speculators
It’s been a rough few weeks for Bitcoin traders. The market seems to be in a downfall, and the value of bitcoin has been falling steadily for months, no matter what news comes around. Expedia started accepting bitcoin; DISH started accepting bitcoin and Overstock announced international payments allowed in Bitcoin. There have been ups and downs along the way, but, all in all, the market has seen better days.
PayPal and Braintree’s support may be a turning point.
PayPal isn’t a small name in the world. They’re arguably the top dog. Their public support is something that the Bitcoin community is asking for actively almost every day, and now it’s here. Sure, PayPal isn’t integrating Bitcoin into their personal app. It’s a smart move to let the smaller company innovate while you wait for a well-polished end result.
A few months ago, eBay’s CEO expressed outright support for Bitcoin. eBay owns PayPal, and PayPal owns Braintree. The chain of command is incredibly clear, and Bitcoin speculators can only hope that this Coinbase partnership leads to bitcoins becoming easily acceptable across real, mainstream platforms already set in place.
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