The universal nature of bitcoin makes it easier for people from any part of the world to pay with the same denomination for any goods and services availed over the internet. This feature offers boundless opportunities to the e-commerce industry by opening up geographical barriers for trade.
EBay, one of the largest ecommerce platforms in the world now has its eye set on Bitcoin. According to reports, the company is currently looking into different digital wallet options for integration into the platform. The hunt for digital wallets is said to include both fiat and bitcoin wallets. The use of digital wallets in increasing in many developing countries across the world. By including them among payment options, eBay can expect to have more retailers as well as users using the platform.
EBay’s interest in bitcoin comes after its Latin American equivalent, MercadoLibre included bitcoin as one of the payment options through its payment processor, MercadoPago. MercadoPago is the PayPal equivalent in the Latin American ecommerce sector. Incidentally eBay is one of the stakeholders in MercadoLibre as well.
On the other hand, W3C – World Wide Web Consortium, the organization responsible for standardizing the html and other codes for webpages is also working on creating a universal standard of online retail platforms. The W3C workgroup is also exploring bitcoin as one of the global standard payment option.
The default payment option currently used by eBay — PayPal also has few functionalities that are similar to a digital wallet. However, PayPal is not fully functional across all geographies. PayPal’s certain features are not available in few regions. The processing fee charged by PayPal is also a bit towards the higher end of the spectrum and merchants especially those selling small, lesser priced articles may be affected by the existing transaction fees. It will be a good move for eBay to include bitcoin payments as part of its payments system as it will get more merchants to sign up on the platform from around the world.