U.S.-based payments giant PayPal has filed a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), published on March 1, to increase the speed of cryptocurrency payments. The patent describes an “Expedited Virtual Currency Transaction System”, involving the use of secondary private keys to shorten wait times for transactions between consumers and merchants.
The patent’s inventors are listed as Cheng Tian and Sandy Lynn Godsey of San Jose, California, with PayPal Inc. listed as the applicant. According to the patent, PayPal is attempting to solve the problem of slow transaction times for cryptocurrency trades that have led potential crypto users to “instead choose to perform the transaction using traditional payment methods rather than virtual currency:”
“Issues like this have slowed the adoption of virtual currencies despite their advantages” the patent states.
The patent details how the creation of secondary wallets with their own private keys will make transaction times much faster, “practically eliminat[ing] the amount of time the payee must wait to be sure they will receive a virtual currency payment in a virtual currency transaction.” The shortened wait time is due to the reportedly faster process of transferring the private keys associated with “predefined amounts” of cryptocurrency that are equivalent to the amount in the transaction.
In late February 2018, PayPal’s chief financial officer John Rainey spoke favorably of the possibility for Bitcoin (BTC) to become a popular payment method “used every day”.