A PayPal announcement provided an immediate lift of 10% to the value of bitcoin

PayPal has partnered with three of the leading bitcoin processors to enable support for the crypto-currency among its digital merchants. Available initially in North America, Paypal has collaborated with BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin to manage the transactions on behalf of merchant customers.

„Starting today (September 23), these agreements let PayPal digital goods merchants accept Bitcoin with a simple integration through the PayPal Payments Hub. This will be available to merchants in North America first.” says the company. „We believe digital goods merchants will be excited to work with these industry-leading companies to sell ringtones, games and music and get paid with Bitcoin.”

Scott Ellison, Senior Director Corporate Strategy, PayPal has made some remarks to the news:
„To be clear, today’s news does not mean that PayPal has added Bitcoin as a currency in our digital wallet or that Bitcoin payments will be processed on our secure payments platform. PayPal has always embraced innovation, but always in ways that make payments safer and more reliable for our customers. Our approach to Bitcoin is no different. That’s why we’re proceeding gradually, supporting Bitcoin in some ways today and holding off on other ways until we see how things develop.”

He added: „But giving our digital goods merchants an easy, one-stop way to test the waters with this new form of payment isn’t the only way we work with Bitcoin.  For some time now, we’ve helped merchants selling Bitcoin mining equipment to accept PayPal payments. This will continue. But to safeguard customers, we’ve decided not to work with merchants who pre-sell these products.  This is consistent with our approach to pre-sales of other goods; we hold off anytime we determine that pre-selling may not provide a good buyer experience.”

Pre-selling is when a business asks for money up-front for a product or service it will deliver in the future. Customers may not get their money back if the business goes out of business before the product is shipped but after a buyer protection period expires.  „Again, our decision not to support pre-sales is shaped by our desire to protect our customers.”

The PayPal news provided an immediate lift of 10% to the value of bitcoin, raising the currency back above the $400 mark on the prospect of the creation of more merchant storefronts where users can spend their stash.
“The spike today is a nice example of news hitting the market and how the market reacts.” says Raffael Danielli to coindesk.com.