PayPal is looking for a way to make cryptocurrency payments faster.
PayPal has filed a patent for an “EXPEDITED VIRTUAL CURRENCY TRANSACTION SYSTEM” on March 1, 2018. The system is meant to speed up transactions by creating secondary wallets with their own private keys. The patent states that a “transaction is performed using the first user primary wallet private key to transfer predefined amounts of the virtual currency from the first user primary wallet to each of the first user secondary wallets”. When ”an instruction is received to transfer a payment amount to a second user, and the second user is allocated a subset of the first user secondary wallet private keys included in respective first user secondary wallets that are associated with predefined amounts of the virtual currency that equal the payment amount.” Basically, the private key is swapped from a buyer to a seller.
The process of transferring the private keys to the wallets with the predefined amount is reportedly faster than sending a transaction and waiting for it to be included in the next block.
“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 patent states.
This is a revolutionary system and it could potentially enable almost instant transactions.
In the past, PayPal has expressed interest in the cryptocurrencies by partnering with several bitcoin payment processors. Also, Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, is reportedly heavily involved in cryptocurrencies via Founders Fund, the VC firm he co-founded.
