PayPal users will soon be able to pay merchants in Bitcoin.
Braintree, the payments company acquired by eBay last year, announced it will be adding support for Bitcoin payments to its platform in the coming months. The company is also making it easier for users to pay merchants in the PayPal and Braintree's mobile payments app Venmo mobile apps with one-touch payments.
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Braintree CEO Bill Ready announced the changes during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on Monday, saying PayPal was looking to embrace the virtual currency and make mobile payments more accessible.
"While we’re focused on giving people more seamless buying experiences, we’re also fierce advocates of giving merchants -- and in turn their customers -- flexibility and the freedom of choice," Ready said in a statement.
The move to adopt Bitcoin is powered by a partnership with processing platform Coinbase. It will be up to individual developers and merchants to integrate Coinbase with their Braintree accounts; once enabled, consumers will be able to pay those merchants in Bitcoin using existing Coinbase wallets. The platform is still in the works and will roll out over the coming months.
Ready also announced the addition of one-touch payments to PayPal and Venmo, which eliminates the need for usernames and passwords each time you pay. One Touch will roll out to the apps over the coming days.