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PayPal goes crypto-currency with Bitcoin

eBay no Silk Road

eBay's PayPal business will start accepting the crypto-currency Bitcoin for payments “over the coming months”.

The move confirms rumours that emerged in August that the online store was in talks with Bitcoin processor Coinbase.

Those talks involved Braintree, which the company acquired early this year, and according to Bloomberg, it was Braintree's chief Bill Ready that announced the move is going ahead.

The functionality will initially be offered to PayPal merchants who use Braintree, and naturally enough, Ready said the outfit is lining up merchants for a PR blitz (actually what he apparently said is that eBay will announce which merchants start using Bitcoin in the coming months, but it means the same thing).

While eBay hasn't outlined the longer-term future, analysts are hyperventilating that Bitcoin may eventually get integrated into the PayPal wallet, giving “millions of retailers” instant exposure to the currency.

Braintree has blogged to confirm that, as rumoured in August, the payments will be facilitated by Coinbase, which also announced that it's going to start letting customers convert their Bitcoin into Euros, initially with a €500 limit on transactions.

Braintree is also inviting merchant registration for an upcoming beta, and adds that its Bitcoin support will be via the v.zero SDK. ®

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