Apple nudges PayPal deeper into bitcoin

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — EBay is taking a bet that digital currencies like bitcoin lead a new wave of payments in the future. And it’s doing this just ahead of the launch of Apple’s new, potentially eBay-rivaling, payments service.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company on Tuesday announced agreements with leading bitcoin payment processors BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin to enable PayPal merchants to accept the currency.
eBay EBAY, 0.21% will gradually widen its support of bitcoin, said Scott Ellison, PayPal’s senior director of corporate strategy, at first rolling out the capability only to merchants in North America.
The announcement comes at a critical point for PayPal’s merchants business as mobile payments continue to evolve.
Apple Pay, Apple’s AAPL, -0.74% new one-touch payment service, is set to spring to life next month in some 220,000 stores across the country.

This post was published at Market Watch on Sept 23, 2014.