eBay Is Considering Integrating Bitcoin Into PayPal

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EBAY CEO CONSIDERS BITCOIN FOR PAYPAL: At an annual shareholder meeting, eBay CEO John Donahoe said he was considering Bitcoin integration for PayPal, the International Business Times reports. "We think bitcoin will play a very important role in the future. Exactly how that plays out, and how we can best take advantage of it and enable it with PayPal, that's something we're actively considering. It's on our radar screen."

The statement marks a significant shift in eBay/PayPal's attitude towards Bitcoin, and will push other online payment companies to seriously consider integration. In the past, eBay had listed Bitcoin as a potential competitive threat to PayPal in regulatory filings. And in late 2013, PayPal CEO David Marcus said he was intrigued by Bitcoin (and owned some of his own) but did not think PayPal was ready to allow its customers to link their accounts with Bitcoin wallets.

BITCOIN 2014 ROUNDUP: The Bitcoin Foundation's annual conference took place over the weekend in Amsterdam, generating a flurry of headlines. Here are some highlights:

• Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne delivered a keynote declaring his support for the "crypto revolution."
• Circle Internet Financial, which has raised millions for a Bitcoin-based consumer payments product, unveiled its plans for a free service that uses Bitcoin as a platform for simple money transfers.
• And Tony Gallippi, CEO of BitPay, detailed the Bitcoin payment processor's growth stats, revealing that the company has signed up 30,000 merchants to date.

P2P PAYMENT APPS REVIEWED: Writing for the Journal, tech journalist Joanna Stern reviewed four of the most popular peer-to-peer payment apps. Here are her findings:

• Venmo's social newsfeed, which shows which friends have been sending money to one other, isn't as creepy as it sounds. "I started to see the fun in it," Stern writes.
• Square Cash is the only app of the four that doesn't allow you to make free transfers from a connected checking account - though it does allow free transfers with a linked debit card. The best thing about the app is the ability to receive money from people who haven't downloaded it - you can send them a link to a secure online payment form.
• Google Wallet has a similar function, but it only works through Gmail, and the signup process is clunkier.
• PayPal offers international transfers and transactions up to $10,000.

MASTERCARD TO OPEN DUBAI PROCESSING CENTER: MasterCard is preparing to open an integrated processing center in Dubai, the Kahleej Times reports. Set to open by the end of this year, the facility will focus on processing prepaid and debit payments - areas of significant growth for MasterCard in the region lately.

British grocery chain Waitrose is rolling out in-store iBeacons and a payment app.

Payment-processing giant Heartland announced a new security-focused processing package for merchants, complete with "breach warranty."

U.S. Bank promotes innovation on its payments squad, using an in-house innovation competition and a review panel made up of top executives, "just like in Shark Tank."

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