Google Partners with Crypto Exchanges to Allow Digital Asset Cards

Google Pay, the firm’s payments division, is seeking to partner with crypto exchanges and companies to expand payments options for the platform.

According to a Jan. 20 Bloomberg article, Google has partnered with firms such as Coinbase and BitPay, to “store crypto assets in digital cards, while still having users pay in traditional currencies.”

The search giant has yet to fully embrace digital assets and does not accept them but said it was seeking more of these types of partnerships in an effort to entice more users to its payments app. Bill Ready, Google’s president of commerce commented:

“Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to. As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we’ll evolve with it.”

Big Hire From PayPal

In an additional effort to bolster its payments platform, Google (GOOG) has hired former PayPal (PYPL) executive Arnold Goldberg to run its payments division.

Ready added that the hire is part of a “broader strategy to team up with a wider range of financial services, including cryptocurrencies.”

Google has spent several years developing the payments side of the business and planning a digital checking and savings service with a number of banking partners. However, Ready confirmed that the firm has no intentions of becoming a bank.

The firm lags way behind its competitors Apple on the payments business side of things so this latest shakeup and pivot towards crypto appears to be a drive to reverse this trend. According to research in 2020, Google accounted for just 4% of contactless payments in the U.S. for that year.

Google Pay takes no fees on transactions and this will not change according to Ready who added that more payment features within search and its shopping service will be added to show users “the entire array of financial services out there.”

Targeting Searchers and Shoppers

Google, which spent $1 billion on a new London property last week, aims to become the network linking all payment options, including crypto, rather than a dedicated payments platform. The move to accept digital cards with crypto from various exchanges is evidence that it is finally warming to the nascent decentralized financial ecosystem.

The firm wants to keep web searchers and shoppers on Google, “helping more activity occur on a free and open web – that naturally pays dividends to our overall business,” added Ready. The company makes billions through targeted advertising so it does not necessarily need to take commissions on payments as crypto exchanges do.