Paypal Is Searching For Faster Crypto Payments Tech

A recent released patent filing shows, that PayPal is looking a way to boost the speed of cryptocurency payments.

On March 1 there was published an application for an “Expedited Virtual Currency Transaction System” by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It details a method by which private keys- the strings of numbers and letters used to transact or otherwise control cryptocurrency holdings- are swapped from a buyer to a seller behind the scenes.

The concept aims to narrow the amount of time of payments, particularly avoiding the process of sending a transaction and waiting for it to be included in the next block on the network. For this purpose, PayPal suggested a way to create secondary wallets with their own unique private keys for buyers and sellers.  Through this system it will be available transferring private keys corresponding to an exact amount of any given cryptocurrency.

The filling says:

“The systems and methods of the present disclosure practically eliminate the amount of time the payee must wait to be sure they will receive a virtual currency payment in a virtual currency transaction by transferring to the payee private keys that are included in virtual currency wallets that are associated with predefined amounts of virtual currency that equal a payment amount identified in the virtual currency transaction.”

The submission is a notable one, coming years after PayPal announced partnerships with several bitcoin payment processors that allowed merchants to accept the cryptocurrency through the company’s Payments Hub starting in 2014.

The co-founder of PayPal Peter Thiel is is also reportedly invested heavily in bitcoin via Founders Fund.