PayPal has entered into agreements with Bitcoin payment processors BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin. Starting today, these agreements let PayPal digital goods merchants accept Bitcoin with an integration through the PayPal Payments Hub. This will be available to merchants in North America first. The integration with PayPal’s Payments Hub is now completed and ready for merchants in North America to enable. Merchants using Payments Hub can create a BitPay merchant account and provide the API credentials into the Payments Hub admin. Customers with a bitcoin wallet will then be able to pay with bitcoin for games, music, videos, news, ebooks, and other digital content.

The news does not mean that PayPal has added Bitcoin as a currency in its digital wallet or that Bitcoin payments will be processed on its secure payments platform. The company is just giving its digital goods merchants an easy way to test the waters with this new form of payment.

For some time now, Paypal helped merchants selling Bitcoin mining equipment to accept PayPal payments. But for security reasons, Paypal says it decided not to work with merchants who pre-sell these products.

In order to follow the laws and regulations, virtual currency exchangers and administrators interested in working with PayPal in the future must secure the appropriate licenses and put anti-money laundering procedures in place.

"PayPal is excited about all the innovations taking place in payments these days. More choices in how people create value, share it, buy, sell and trade it – that’s exactly what PayPal is all about," said Scott Ellison, Senior Director, Strategy, PayPal. "We believe Bitcoin offers unique opportunities as more people and businesses experiment with it. PayPal is excited to work with BitPay to offer new experiences and the trusted service our customers expect. We hope to do more together as the Bitcoin ecosystem continues to evolve."

Earlier this month, Paypal also announced that businesses working with Braintree would soon be able to accept Bitcoin as a payment option through their v.zero SDK and relationship with Coinbase.