Google Hired PayPal Exec To Expand Its Crypto Footprint: Report

Google hired PayPal executive to expand its crypto footprint as it wants to provide financial services like Bitcoin credit and debit cards so let’s read further in our latest crypto news.

Alphabet Inc, as a subsidiary, Google hired PayPal executive, Senior Vice President Arnold Goldberg to lead its payment division according to the latest reports from Bloomberg. Three months after abandoning the strategy to allow Google Pay users to create checking and savings accounts via its proposed Plex Service, the search and ads giant will get even more deeply into other financial services like crypto debit cards. The Google President of Commerce Bill Ready noted:

“Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to. As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we’ll evolve with it.”

Google Pay is the company’s digital wallet for online or contactless mobile purhcases that made some tentative strides into the crypto space. Back in 2020, because of the impending COVID lockdowns, google Pay added integration for Coinbase Card, Visa debit card which enables BTC payments. The users could include the card details on their Android phones and will start buying things in BTC.

In August 2021, a few months after integrating with Apple Pay, BitPay Mastercards joined Google Pay as well and in October the same year, Bakkt announced that holders of its debit card can use it together with Google Pay to purchase goods and services while using BTC. The service essentially provided a new way for people to exchange their BTC and USD at points of sale. Google still lags behind Apple Pay because of the Apple dominance of the US phone market and its focus on app development.

Goldberg however, can help with this. In late 2020, while Goldberg was with the company, PayPal annoucned that customers can become able to buy crypto like BTC and ETH on its platform. The payment service company increased its offerings in 2021 with the launch of crypto payments for merchants and integrations with the Venmo app.

Also as we saw recently, Coinbase and Paypal join Taxbit to bring free crypto tax forms while Taxbit wants to prevent crypto users from spending thousands to generate these tax forms. The Taxbit network at the launch included 20 major crypto companies in the US including companies like Coinbase and PayPal, Gemini, FTX.US, Celsius Network, Blockchain.com, Venmo, OKCoin, BlockFi, and Paxos.