PayPal’s Braintree Extending to Bitcoin, One-touch Payments

PayPal, which last September paid US$800m to acquire online and mobile payments platform Braintree is unveiling one-touch payments and integrating Bitcoin, according to a report by
TechCrunch
.

The technology information service adds that Bill Ready, Braintree’s chief executive officer (CEO), says that mobile conversion rates are still far off from where they are on the desktop web-due partly to the fact that it’s more tedious to enter or re-enter credit card information on mobile devices.

Ready says that more than half of e-commerce shopping experiences happen on mobile devices, but only 10% to 15% of purchases occur on smartphones. “The reason for that gap is that there’s a two-thirds to 75% fall off in conversion,” he told
TechCrunch
. “People just bail out.”

However after months of tests, Braintree is unveiling a way for people to pay across different apps with a single touch, which eliminates the need for usernames and passwords. Early launch partners include Jane.com, ParkWhiz, StubHub and Type Tees by Threadless.

“We’re able to get to a better conversion rate on mobile than on desktop,” Ready said. “You should be able to get a strong amount of ecommerce sessions on phones and buys.”

Braintree is also partnering with Y Combinator and digital wallet Coinbase to enable a Bitcoin-based payment system. “This is PayPal making a move to embrace Bitcoin,” Ready said, with a launch anticipated in the coming months.