Google Will Start Accepting Payments in Cryptocurrency

Thanks to the integration of the services of one of the largest crypto exchanges, some clients of the digital giant will be able to pay with virtual assets for cloud services

Some Google customers will be able to pay for cloud services with cryptocurrency as early as early 2023, representatives of the corporation said during the Google Cloud Next conference, CNBC reports . This will be possible thanks to the cooperation of the corporation with one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase.

At first, Google will accept payments in cryptocurrency from a limited number of customers using the integrated Coinbase Commerce service, Amit Zaveri, vice president and general manager and head of the Google Cloud platform, said in an interview with the American edition. Coinbase Commerce currently supports 10 currencies including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.

Over time, Google will allow many more customers to use the cryptocurrency, Zaveri says. He also noted that the digital giant is considering using the Coinbase Prime service to store and conduct transactions in cryptocurrency.

The agreement, announced at Google’s Cloud Next conference, may be successful in luring cutting-edge companies to Google in a competitive, rapidly growing market where Google’s top competitors currently do not allow clients to pay with cryptocurrency. The cloud business helps Google parent Alphabet diversify away from advertising, and it now accounts for 9% of revenue, up from less than 6% three years ago, as it is growing faster than Alphabet overall.

According to Amit Zaveri , vice president and general manager and head of platform at Google Cloud, the Google Cloud Platform infrastructure service will initially accept cryptocurrency payments from a handful of Web3 customers who want to pay with cryptocurrency, thanks to an integration with the Coinbase Commerce service. Web3 is a buzzword that refers to decentralized and distributed internet services that are not controlled by large internet companies like Facebook or Google.

Google is also investigating how it can use Coinbase Prime, a service that securely stores cryptocurrencies for businesses and allows them to execute trades. Google, according to Zaveri, will experiment with cryptocurrency asset management and “see how we can participate.” Companies that have added cryptocurrency to their balance sheets include Block (the payments company formerly known as Square), Coinbase, MicroStrategy, and Tesla. That can be a dangerous endeavor. In August, Coinbase announced a $377 million impairment charge related to a decline in the value of its cryptocurrency holdings.

At the same time, Coinbase said it will use Google’s cloud infrastructure for data storage. The exchange will migrate its applications from the Amazon Web Services cloud service it has been using for years, Jim Migdal, Coinbase’s vice president of business development, said. He also noted that when making cryptocurrency payments, Coinbase will receive a percentage of transactions. Other terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Cryptocurrency adoption is on the rise. So, in early October, a McDonald’s restaurant in the Swiss city of Lugano began accepting cryptocurrency for payment. And in the summer, it became known that resort hotels in the Maldives and Thailand were accepting digital assets.