According to leaked rumors from the Bloomberg news agency, the Mountain View internet search giant would have hired former PayPal senior vice president Arnold Goldberg as director of its digital payments division, Google Pay. According to many experts, this move represents another step towards Google’s implementation of cryptocurrency payments.
Summary
Google and cryptocurrency payments
On the subject of digital currencies, the president of Google’s e-commerce section, Bill Ready, explained to Bloomberg that
“Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to. As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we’ll evolve with it”.
What’s more, in October a partnership was announced between Google and Bakkt, the technology platform (listed on the NYSE) that allows consumers, businesses and institutions to unlock the value of digital assets.
The agreement would be aimed at extending the reach and usability of digital assets within Google Pay to purchase everyday goods and services online, in-store or wherever it is accepted as a form of payment.
On the other hand, in September, the internet search giant had struck a deal with Dapper Labs to support the Flow Blockchain through Google Cloud and help it scale.
Google doesn’t seem to be as interested in traditional finance as it seemed when the Plex service was launched for opening bank accounts directly on Google’s digital payment app.
Ready had said in an interview in November:
“We’re not a bank, we don’t intend to be a bank. Some past efforts would sometimes unintentionally seep into those spaces.”
Google pay still lagging behind competitors
The results of Google’s digital payments app are rather disappointing when compared to those of a rival like Apple, for example. In some countries, such as India, it is widely used, but in many other countries the growth of the service launched in 2015 is so far very slow.
Tom Noyes, an industry analyst, estimated that in 2020 Google accounted for about 4% of contactless payments in the United States, calling the service “largely a failure”.
Thus, as also admitted by Ready, the fact of including cryptocurrency payments in the app could be an attempt to broaden the audience of users of the service.
The entry into Google Pay of the manager of PayPal, which since November has enabled payments in cryptocurrencies and that according to the latest rumors would be working to create its own stablecoin, could be a clear sign of the willingness of the leaders of Mountain View to accelerate this process towards payments in cryptocurrencies.
