Paypal recently announced that it is working towards enabling some of its major clients to be able to accept bitcoin from customers via Paypal. The benefit goes both ways for merchants and customers: merchants are able to accept an additional form of payment at no incremental work or cost (since the functionality lives on the Paypal platform) and customers can put more value (and faith!) into bitcoin and potentially other cryptocurrencies. While this is another win for bitcoin after a string of exciting announcements in the past year(s) (bitcoin's acceptance on overstock.com and newegg for example), it is still a hard to accept form of digital payment for many. The topic of bitcoins and retailers accepting bitcoins has been buzzworthy and in my opinion, a marketing ploy to get innovators and early adopters to try the currency out with credible players. However, it has not caught on as expected, likely due to the many security issues bitcoin exchanges have experienced in the past, with about 1 in 10 bitcoins having been lost. Despite all this, everything is moving to be mobile-driven, including payments. And with that shift means more consumers opening up to the idea of an everyday behavior of digitally-transferring money. Bitcoin can offer lower transactions costs and more flexibility, so its time to shine may come in the not-so-far-distant future. Just not today.
Source: Techcrunch
Source: Techcrunch
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