Google and Coinbase Partner to Bring Crypto Payments to Cloud Services
Google, the tech titan, has teamed up with Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States by trading volume, to enable users to pay for cloud services with cryptocurrency. Customers in a select group will now be able to pay with Bitcoin, Ether, and Dogecoin.
According to Amit Zavery, Google Cloud Vice President and General Manager, the strategic partnership with Coinbase will be through Coinbase commerce—a crypto payment platform for merchants—and will be available to only a select group of customers when it launches in 2023. The platform currently accepts only ten cryptocurrency payments, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Bitcoin Cash.
In addition, as a result of this collaboration, Coinbase will shift its data-related application hosting from Amazon Web Services to Google’s cloud infrastructure. Coinbase Prime, Coinbase’s custody service, will also be used by Google.
Although the terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, stated, “We want to make building in Web3 faster and easier, and this partnership with Coinbase helps developers get one step closer to that goal.”
Google and Crypto Romance
Google’s interest in crypto and Web3 is well known. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, recently invested $1.5 billion in various blockchain startups, including Dapper Labs and Alchemy.
You may recall that Google hired former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg to lead its payment division in January 2022 to explore crypto as a payment method.
Also in September 2022, SkyMavis, the creator of the popular play-to-earn NFT game Axie Infinity, partnered with Google Cloud to help improve the security of its Ronin network and act as an independent validator.
There is no doubt that tech giants are becoming more interested in blockchain and Web3.0. Last year, Facebook rebranded as Meta to capitalize on the benefits of the metaverse. It recently introduced the NFT feature to Facebook users. To develop Web3.0, Microsoft invested $20 million in a decentralized data warehouse. The movement to adopt new technology will continue as it becomes more widely available.