Google Cards Can Now Store Crypto

By Kevin • January 20, 2022 2:46 pm • Comments

Google has recently announced that they have formed partnerships with Coinbase and Bitpay to add a new functionality to Google cards.

The new functionality announced is that Google cards will soon be able to hold bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as well as enable customers to spend regular fiat currencies.

This latest feature to be added is one announcement out of many of Google’s initiatives that are increasingly focused on getting the company involved in the blockchain and crypto space as the company sees it as a major opportunity to take advantage of.

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Google especially wants to get involved in the payment space and has been struggling the past couple years to gain additional market share in the payments industry.

Nasdaq.com reports:

“Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to,” said Bill Ready, Google’s president of commerce, per the report.

“As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we’ll evolve with it.”

According to the report, Google has formed partnerships with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Inc. and cryptocurrency payment processor BitPay to enable the new functionality.

The executive told Bloomberg that his team is looking for additional partnership opportunities, though the company still isn’t accepting bitcoin for transactions.

Google’s cryptocurrency integrations allow its customers to hold BTC in their digital cards while spending fiat currency, an arrangement that doesn’t precisely use the peer-to-peer asset as a medium of exchange but enables users to spend their bitcoin holdings.

This new announcement is part of Google’s more high level strategic initiative to become a connective tissue for the consumer finance industry.

Google had previously hired Arnold Goldberg, an executive from PayPal, to lead its payment division of Google Pay which has long been a struggling area of the company that had not gained any traction since inception.

The recent actions taken by the search engine giant could possibly indicate that it is reforming the way it tackles the emerging industry as it had previously decided to not pursue the banking industry.

One key distinction to point out about this partnership is that the users will still be paying in fiat.

Cryptonewsz.com reports:

In order to implement the cryptocurrency payments, Google has struck a partnership with Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange and Bitpay payment processing gateway for the cryptocurrencies.

It is important to note that Google has not yet started accepting Bitcoin as one of the legitimate methods of making transactions.

This particular arrangement of holding cryptocurrencies in Google’s digital cards will facilitate the transaction in fiat currencies.

Google has already made its intentions very clear that it doesn’t want to become a player in the banking industry.

Rather the organization would like to act as a “connective tissue” that will help the entire category of financial technology to reach its customers in a more effective and efficient manner.

Compared to competitors like Apple, Google currently lacks any widely accepted financial products and services such as credit card solutions and payment solutions besides Google Pay which has not gained to much traction apart from a few countries.

Google is part of a long list of technology companies that are continuing to invest time, capital, and resources to researching the blockchain and crypto space as the space continues to grow exponentially throughout the past few years.

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