Google will start accepting bitcoin and cryptocurrency as payment for its cloud services early next year.
The internet giant announced on Tuesday that it had formed a partnership with the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., Coinbase, to enable the new payment method.
“Powered by Coinbase Commerce — which enables merchants globally to accept cryptocurrency payments in a decentralized way — the new payments experience will benefit Google Cloud’s customers and partners by increasing the optionality of payments for Google Cloud services,” Google said in a statement.
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said the company’s focus is to make it “frictionless for all customers to take advantage of our scalability, reliability, security, and data services” so clients can focus on innovating in the cryptocurrency space.
In addition, Google will use Coinbase Prime, the exchange’s institutional cryptocurrency investing and custody platform. Although it is not yet clear what specific services offered by the platform Google will leverage, the company hinted at custody and reporting services on its statement.
The collaboration will also bring Coinbase’s global data platform to Google Cloud, enabling cryptocurrency developers to access Google’s BigQuery public datasets, which will be powered by Coinbase Cloud Nodes.
“The integration will allow developers to instantly and reliably operate Web3-based systems without the need for expensive and complex infrastructure,” per the announcement.