SAN FRANCISCO – Merchants using Braintree’s payment platform will have a new currency to accept, thanks to a partnership between the company and Bitcoin processor Coinbase.
Braintree CEO Bill Ready announced at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco today that the company is launching a new private beta that will allow merchants to easily integrate the cryptocurrency into their existing payments workflow. Using the Braintree v.Zero Software Development Kit, developers will be able to integrate bitcoin alongside traditional payments like credit cards or PayPal.
It’s a big step for Braintree, a subsidiary of PayPal, both in terms of expanding the currencies that the company transacts in, but also by expanding what the company’s customers can offer through their own applications.
“This is the first time PayPal has worked with Bitcoin,” Ready said.
In addition, Braintree also announced a new One Touch feature that’s designed to make it simple for people to purchase items on their phone. An app like StubHub with One Touch integration first sends users over to the PayPal app, where it asks them to authorize future purchases. After that, users who purchase goods from that app can do so without having to go through PayPal again.
The announcements come at an interesting time for the mobile payments industry. Amazon recently announced its Local Register credit card payment service, and Apple is rumored to launch its own mobile payment technology at an event tomorrow. Bitcoin has also caught the attention of a number of companies, including Expedia, which recently started allowing people to purchase hotel rooms with the cryptocurrency.
