E-commerce giant eBay might add cryptocurrency payments options on its platform, according to leaked ad images from the annual Consensus crypto event
The images from the conference show that the company is displaying crypto ads with one of the placards reading “Virtual Currency. It’s happening on eBay.”
"Leaked from Consensus, eBay possibly announcing the support of cryptocurrencies on their website." – @PatronsOfTheMoon Telegram. #share #bitcoin #cryptocurrency pic.twitter.com/xqbpdysUic
— wolf (@ImNotTheWolf) May 12, 2019
eBay is one of the major e-commerce platforms on the globe. As displayed on another placard, the platform has around 179 million active buyers around the world, and, with numbers of this scale, if it opens the crypto payments options, it will be a huge boost for the adaptation of the digital currencies.
The website already features a section dedicated to virtual currencies and lists crypto-related products including Bitcoin miners and hardware wallets.
Bringing crypto to the masses
In 2017, the California headquartered tech giant had already evaluated the prospect of adding crypto-based payments options. In an interview, a former executive of the company revealed that eBay is “seriously considering” to accept payments in Bitcoins. However, the company did not follow up on the prospect.
eBay is not the first e-commerce giant to add a Bitcoin payments option. Overstock already jumped on the crypto wagon and added payments option with Bitcoin along with crypto buying and selling services. Many other major tech entities including Microsoft also accept the digital currency.
However, the volatile price of the coin has forced many companies to stop accepting Bitcoins.
As the pictures of eBay’s ads were uploaded on the internet, speculations around them began to gear up. Many have pointed out that former eBay and Paypal executive Sanja Kon has joined crypto payments company UTRUST as its vice president of global partnership and that the e-commerce company might end up partnering with it.
Meanwhile, last week, Paypal’s CFO clarified that is is “too early” for the payment processing giant to offer Bitcoin payments.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
