EBay’s subsidiary payment firm Braintree is reportedly in talks with several bitcoin transaction providers in a bid to accept the digital currency in future.
According to reports from the Wall Street Journal on Thursday PayPal executives have recently met with Coinbase Inc. and other bitcoin payment processor companies to facilitate bitcoin transactions on the Braintree network.
No agreement has been reached to yet despite the meetings sources claimed. According to the WSJ report, the deal, when reached, would potentially allow bitcoin payments for services including Airbnb and Uber that uses Paypal’s Braintree division to accept Bitcoin.
Several large-scale companies including online retailer Overstock.com and television provider DISH Network have already started accepting bitcoin for goods and services.
Braintree, which offers payments software for popular mobile applications like Uber, Airbnb, and GitHub, was acquired by PayPal for $800m in December last year. Founded in 2007 by entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, Braintree currently serves 40 countries and 130 different currencies.
Although there’s no word from eBay and PayPal on whether or not they themselves will be accepting bitcoin any time soon, eBay CEO John Donahoe had previously hinted the PayPal platform might go for integrating the digital currency at some point in future.
EBay spokeswoman Jennifer Hakes said the company do believe that Bitcoin will play an important role in payments in the future, but it has nothing to announce as of yet.
