Google partners with Coinbase to accept crypto payments for cloud services

America’s largest crypto exchange, Coinbase has signed a deal with Google, which will see the latter accepting cryptocurrency for some of its cloud computing clients. 

The ‘partnership’ was announced at Google’s Cloud Next conference, will allows Google to make inroads into cutting-edge crypto and Web3 companies who want to use digital currencies as their payment method and Coinbase to receive a percentage of these payments that can help them diversify away from revenue based on trading volume. 

"We want to make building in Web3 faster and easier, and this partnership with Coinbase helps developers get one step closer to that goal," said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, adding that the focus is making it frictionless for all customers to take advantage of our scalability, reliability, security, and data services, so they can focus on innovation in the Web3 space." 

Reports also suggest that this payment method would be rolled out in early 2023 and Coinbase would use Google’s cloud infrastructure. The deal would be one of its kind as Google’s top rivals do not currently allow customers to pay with digital currencies. 

Amit Zavery, VP and General Manager and head of the platform at Google Cloud shared that the platform will first accept crypto payments from a few Web3 clients who want to pay with cryptocurrency with the help of integration with the Coinbase Commerce service. 

The ‘Google Cloud Platform’ infrastructure will thus give out its service in a phased manner, the company said. Gradually, Google will let other customers make payments via crypto.  

It is worth mentioning that Coinbase Commerce currently supports ten currencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Litecoin. 

This deal with Coinbase reportedly allows Google to address a gap in the market by allowing companies in the crypto space to pay for their cloud storage using digital currency. Currently there aren’t any major competitors working in this area. 

CNBC earlier reported that there "wasn't a guarantee" that Google would stick with Coinbase for payments processing, and there’s competition from a newly crypto-integrated PayPal business service. 

In recent weeks, Google is already taking baby steps to win the Web3 race. Jim Migdal, Coinbase’s Vice President of business development revealed that the crypto exchange will switch its data-related applications from Amazon Web Services cloud, which has been its partner for years, to Google Cloud.  

Last week, NEAR Foundation, the non-profit organization of NEAR Protocol, had partnered with Google Cloud to accelerate Web3 start-ups. 

In September, Axie Infinity creators Sky Mavis teamed up with Google Cloud to tighten the security of the Ronin blockchain network, an Ethereum sidechain to pursue its vision of building a rewarding gaming universe 

Richard Widmann, Google’s head of strategy, Web3, and cloud, said earlier this month that the team is building a “giant bridge” for cross-chain interoperability. Widmann also remarked that Google’s current ethos aligns with crypto’s core values of open-source development and decentralization.