Today was a triumphant day for Bitcoin, as PayPal signed deals with BitPay, Coinbase, and GoCoin to process bitcoin payments.
“Starting today, these agreements let PayPal digital goods merchants accept Bitcoin with a simple integration through the PayPal Payments Hub,” said Scott Ellison, Senior Director Corporate Strategy on the PayPal blog.
We asked GoCoin founder Steve Beauregard a few questions about the deal and how GoCoin got involved. “We met the PayPal digital currency team at tradeshow over the summer,” said Steve. “We immediately hit common ground with discussions of gaming market interest. PayPal also appeared to appreciate our coin agnostic architecture and the ability to quickly snap in new coins that emerge into significance.”
Unlike Bitpay and Coinbase, GoCoin is a strong supporter of altcoins, and currently makes both Dogecoin and Litecoin available to its merchants. They plan on bringing in many new coins soon. When asked about altcoin integration, Steve replied “Digital currency enthusiast have religion over their coins much in the same way Mac and PC users do. To the merchant, there is not reason they shouldn’t accept every coin available to the so long as a processor like GoCoin takes on the risk of settling in fiat with them.”
We also asked about the fee structure with the partnership. “There will be no additional fees to the consumers or merchants,” said Steve. “PayPal is simply enabling the transactions through their payments hub and take a referral fee from GoCoin. It is no different than how we work with our reseller channels and other gateway partners such as Apriva.”
The partnership is being touted as “baby steps,” the market reacted favorably, with Bitcoin’s price shooting over $440. While the cryptocurrency option is only currently open to digital sellers in North America, this spells out great things for the creative community. It might be exactly what Bitcoin needs to expand in the retail space.