Braintree expected to announce Coinbase partnership today

According to tech industry news website Re/code, PayPal subsidiary Braintree will soon announce that it has entered into a bitcoin-payment processing arrangement with Coinbase, possibly as early as today. Braintree’s service is widely used by a variety of tech startups, including openly disruptive, peer-to-peer services like Uber and Airbnb, which are seemingly ideal adopters for bitcoin technology. Although it has been known since last month that Braintree was looking into bitcoin payments, today’s announcement — if true — is the first confirmation of a partnership between eBay (the parent company of PayPal/Braintree) and Coinbase.

Should the announcement take place today, it will most likely happen at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF event. Braintree CEO Bill Ready is scheduled for a one-on-one interview at the event, making for an opportune time to announce and confirm the partnership. As Re/code reports, the partnership is not immediately expected to extend to PayPal or eBay directly, although today’s other big PayPal news suggests otherwise. Re/code claims that a source within Braintree has confirmed the Coinbase partnership, and that the two organizations have been working together for some time to integrate the payment systems.

The implications of such a partnership are significant. Bitcoin is still seen as something of a fringe phenomenon by many in the mainstream, and often carries the suggestion of a fad or scam in mainstream news coverage. With a major PayPal subsidiary — and perhaps PayPal itself — adopting bitcoin payments through one of the industry’s best-known payment processors, the legitimacy and value of bitcoin is likely to swell in coming weeks. There has been no confirmation of the rumor on the official Coinbase blog, although one is expected after the official announcement takes place.