PayPal Takes Baby Step Toward Bitcoin, Partners With Cryptocurrency Processors

PayPal and its parent company eBay EBAY 0.51% are warming up to Bitcoin, but they’re doing it oh so carefully.
On Tuesday, PayPal announced that it was partnering with Bitcoin processors BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin to allow its merchants to accept the cryptocurrency for digital goods like online games and downloadable songs. It’s a second baby step for the payments giant toward full Bitcoin adoption after the company’s Braintree unit, a mobile payments provider, said earlier this month that it was working on a feature that would let customers of businesses like Uber and Airbnb pay with Bitcoin.
While many have been waiting to see what PayPal would do with Bitcoin – especially with eBay CEO John Donahoe speaking openly about his admiration for the digital currency – Tuesday’s announcement is more of a cautious tread, rather than a headlong leap into the Bitcoin realm. PayPal’s announcement does not mean that it will transact the currency on its own platform or that its users will be able to store Bitcoins in their online wallets.

This post was published at Forbes on 9/23/2014.