Google to accept crypto payments for cloud services using Coinbase

Google stated it will use Coinbase to accept crypto payments for cloud services early next year, CNBC reported. Google Cloud will let customers pay for its services using ten cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Tether.

Google announced the deal at Cloud Next, a conference where Google pitches its computing business to companies. According to Amit Zavery, Google Cloud Vice President and General Manager, Google Cloud will begin accepting crypto payments from a “handful” of customers through integration with the business payments tool Coinbase Commerce.

Currently, Coinbase Commerce supports ten cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Tether. Coinbase Commerce also plans to move “data-related applications” from Amazon Web Services cloud to Google.

According to Jim Migdal, Vice President of business development at Coinbase, the deal will follow other Coinbase Commerce arrangements, earning Coinbase a cut of every transaction that goes through the system.

It wasn’t a guarantee that Google would go with Coinbase for the payments portion of the deal. PayPal, for one, offers businesses a way to take payments with digital currencies. “We did look at other companies for the cryptocurrency side of it,” Zavery said. However, he said, Coinbase had the greatest capability.

Google is also exploring how it can use Coinbase Prime, a service that securely stores organizations’ cryptocurrencies and allows them to execute trades. Zavery said Google will experiment with and “see how we can participate” in managing cryptocurrency assets. Block, Coinbase, MicroStrategy, and Tesla are among the companies that have added digital currencies to their balance sheets. That can be a risky endeavor. Coinbase announced a $377 million impairment charge tied to a decline in the value of its cryptocurrency holdings in August.

Despite Google was not a leader in the Web3 race, recent news indicates that the company’s cool early reception of cryptocurrencies is getting warmer. In September, Sky Mavis partnered with Google Cloud enabling the tech giant’s cloud division to run a validator node on Ronin Network, an Ethereum sidechain used by the P2E game Axie Infinity. The move aims to further decentralize Ronin and enable Google to help secure the sidechain and process transactions.

Richard Widmann, Google’s head of strategy, Web3, and cloud, recently called his company a “layer zero” for blockchain and said the team is building a “giant bridge” for cross-chain interoperability. He also remarked that Google’s current ethos aligns with crypto’s core values of open-source development and decentralization.