PayPal’s Braintree to Integrate Bitcoin and One-Touch Payments

It has been about a year since PayPal purchased the platform Braintree, for $800 million cash. Now Braintree will introduce one-touch payments and will begin incorporating Bitcoin.

Bill Ready, who helped sell the company to PayPal, said that Mobile conversion rates still do not match up with higher rates on the desktop web. This is partly because it is more difficult to enter or re-enter credit card information when using mobile devices. According to Ready, more than half of e-commerce shopping experiences happen on mobile devices; however, only 10 to 15 percent of purchases occur on smartphones.

“The reason for that gap is that there’s a two-thirds to 75 percent fall off in conversion,” Ready said. “People just bail out.”

But now Braintree is introducing a new way to pay, with a single touch and various apps. Say farewell to passwords or usernames and hello to simplicity! The company will be partnering with companies including: Jane.com, ParkWhiz, StubHub and Type Tees by Threadless. Ready stated “We’re able to get to a better conversion rate on mobile than on desktop. You should be able to get a strong amount of ecommerce sessions on phones and buys.”

In addition, Braintree will also be partnering with Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz-backed Coinbase. These partnerships will help them incorporate Bitcoin-based payments. “This is PayPal making a move to embrace Bitcoin” said Bill Ready, who also noted that Braintree is the best developer for PayPal.

Braintree will soon be able to launch, likely before the end of the year. The company also works with well-known companies Uber, Airbnb and Dropbox and Ready says it is steadily growing at 25 percent quarter-over-quarter and that includes handling $14 billion in volume at about the same time eBay acquired it.

For Braintree-supported merchants that want to use Bitcoin payments, they will have to use a Coinbase wallet. This would support instant exchanges and the merchant would have to handle Bitcoin directly – and also get a conversion rate between a fiat currency and Bitcoin instantly.

Source: techcrunch.com