(Updated with comment from Braintree)
Slowly but surely, Bitcoin is getting accepted into the mainstream. I mean, it still has a long way to go before you will see a lot of people using it, but more and more well known sites and companies are beginning to see it as something real and viable.
Now it might be getting another big boost, with news that it may soon be accepted by one of the Internet’s biggest e-commerce companies.
EBay has recently been in talks with Bitcoin transaction providers, such as Coinbase, in order to start accepting the digital currency in its Braintree payments subsidiary, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. No formal agreement has yet been made.
Such a deal would not allow users to use Bitcoin on either eBay or PayPal, at least not yet, though it seems likely that they eventually would. It would, however, allow users to pay for services who use Braintree software for payments processing.
That includes such hot startups as Uber and Airbnb. Obviously being able to use Bitcoin on these sites (one of which recently raised the most money ever in a venture capital round) would go a long way toward legitimizing it.
“We do believe that Bitcoin will play an important role in payments in the future but we have nothing to announce,” a Braintree spokesperson told VatorNews.
Braintree is an e-commerce and m-commerce platform that allows for single click payments. It provides merchants with a secure payment gateway, merchant account, recurring billing and credit card storage.
The company was purchased by eBay for $800 million around a year ago, and recently added in full PayPal integration.
Some of the companies that have already started accepting Bitcoin include Newegg, Expedia, Dell and RealtyShares. Earlier this year Zynga partnered with Bitpay for a Bitcoin payment test as well. Bitcoin has also been embraced by Apple, which recently changed the rules in the App Store to allow apps to accept virtual currency, as long as its legal.
Overstock.com, which accepts Bitcoin, has been a major boost. The company said this week that it expects to add 4 cents a share to its earnings thanks to Bitcoin, which is said could rack up to between $6 million and $8 million this year.
Even governments have taken a shine to it, with California passing a bill in June to legalize digital currencies. In actuality, it simply repealed a previous law, which had banned the use of any currency other than those issued by the United States government.
VatorNews has reached out to eBayfor confirmation but the company was not available for comment. We will update if we learn more.
(Image source: salon.com)
