eBay Inc. CEO John Donahoe, during a recent shareholders meeting, stated the firm is “actively considering” Bitcoin integration with its own payment method PayPal.
It is no secret eBay sees the potential behind the cryptocurrency. This last February s to which Bitcoin and related products and services such as BTC processors are being considered as direct competitors to PayPal.
While no exact information was provided by Donahoe on plans regarding Bitcoin, he did state that the most natural outlet would be to add support for the digital currency to PayPal. He also went out to mention the firm is considering direct involvement with the virtual tender, which partnered with Coinbase for its new BTC support.
“Exactly how that plays out, and how we can best take advantage of it and enable it with PayPal, that’s something we’re actively considering. It’s on our radar screen,” Donahoe stated at the shareholder meeting.
Donahoe is not the only executive in the eBay management team which is showing support for Bitcoin. PayPal president last December stating he predicts “the value of Bitcoin still has the potential to double” and that Bitcoin will eventually win over NFC as the future of payments.
We here at Payment Magnates have noticed a shift coming from both eBay and PayPal over the last year regarding their stance on Bitcoin. We reached out to PayPal back in November 2013 to see where the firm stands on the matter.
We received the following response: “The growth of alternative currencies like bitcoin have the potential to be disruptive technologies but they are all still in the early stages of development. As the company that created the online payments category over a decade ago, PayPal knows how hard it can be to manage payments globally in a regulated environment. We’re closely following this area and look forward to seeing how it develops.” – PayPal Spokesperson.
Since then, we have seen eBay add a , which shows the Ecommerce giant testing the waters on the matter of decentralized and currently not regulated currencies.
Given eBay’s and PayPal’s history with being a strictly regulated and compliant firm, it is believed full integration and support will only be made available once the subject is more clear on a regulatory and legal standpoint.
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