PayPal Integrates Bitcoin Processors BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin

An anonymous reader writes: PayPal today announced partnerships with three major Bitcoin payment processors: BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin. The eBay-owned company wants to help digital goods merchants accept Bitcoin payments, although it is starting with those located in the U.S. and Canada first ("We are considering expanding to other markets," a PayPal spokesperson told TNW. "Stay tuned.")

PayPal says it chose to integrate the third-party functionality directly in the PayPal Payments Hub because the aforementioned trio already offers its customers protections when dealing with the virtual currency. The company envisions anything that can be obtained digitally, such as video games and music, being sold in Bitcoin.

Comments

bitcoin (and altcoins) are circling the drain

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Look at the drop in the value of bitcoin (in dollar terms) over the last year. The same goes for any of the alt coins, at least the ones with enough volume in the market to be remotely useful.

It's all over but the shouting. The pump and dumpers are making some money, but as a currency it's just too risky to hold since the value is tanking.

Re:betrayed, the paypal haters were #yoda

[mythosaz]

As long as those "few rich hands" are BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin - because PayPal still isn't actually accepting "bitcoin."

PayPal takes "BitPay," "Coinbase" and "GoCoin."

BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin take BTC.

Middlemen actually provide a service in this case

[perpenso]

so many middlemen, so much percent ... so much commission for so little work, its almost free money

In this particular case the middle provide a valuable service, they keep a merchant's accounting simple and the middlemen take all the risk.

Using something like coinbase, a merchant never sees or touches a bitcoin. The merchant does all their pricing and accounting in fiat currency (dollars, euro, etc). If a customer wants to use bitcoins the merchant sends the fiat price to the exchange, the exchange returns an equivalent bitcoin amount and a bitcoin payment address (the exchange's), when the coins are received the exchange informs the merchant and most importantly credit the merchant's account for the exact fiat amount originally specified. regardless of the coin's current exchange rate. The merchant's accounting is not complicated by new IRS rules regarding bitcoins (its an asset not a currency) since they never touch a coin, nor do they care about coin price fluctuations.