According to a Bloomberg report, Google has hired Arnold Goldberg, the former senior vice president and chief product architect of payment giant PayPal, to lead its payments business, Google Pay.

Google has been exploring a digital checking and savings service for Google Pay users called "Plex" for years, and it has partnered with 11 banks to launch the service, but in October it pulled the plug. Strategy. Google Pay wants to be a "connector" for the entire consumer finance industry, not just certain partners, and it doesn't want to be a bank.

After abandoning its foray into banking, Google has set a new direction for Google Pay.

While Google has long dominated search and other online services, it has never shaken up the financial world. So far, Google Pay has only gained some traction in India, and has struggled elsewhere. It lags far behind rival Apple Pay, and it doesn't have its own credit cards and financial products like Apple. Industry analyst Tom Noyes estimates that in 2020, Google Pay will account for just 4% of cashless or contactless payments in the US, calling the service "largely a failure."

But Google does sit on a massive consumer clout. Launched in 2015 and upgraded in 2020, Google Pay is designed to be a hub for consumers to track expenses and find discounts, and users are not charged any fees when they use Google Pay for transactions. At the time, Google revealed that the app had 150 million monthly active users worldwide.

"Our goal is to help build connections, not create conflict," Bill Ready, Google's president of commerce, told Bloomberg in an interview.

Therefore, as part of the reform, Google Pay will add more payment functions to search engines and shopping services. To this end, it will cooperate with a wider range of financial services (including encrypted assets) and focus on becoming an "integrated digital wallet."

Ready said: “Encryption is something we are very focused on, and as user needs and merchant needs evolve, we will evolve with them.”

Google Pay has actually made some initial headway in the crypto industry.

In March 2020, Google Pay added support for Coinbase Card, making it easier for users to use encrypted assets to spend in stores. Coinbase Card is a Visa debit card launched by crypto exchange Coinbase in April 2019. Users of the card can pay with 10 different crypto assets directly from their Coinbase balance at any store that accepts Visa payments, and even earn up to 4% back on purchases.

In August 2021, Google Pay added support for the BitPay MasterCard Crypto Debit Card. Two months later, the debit card jointly launched by the encrypted exchange Bakkt and Visa was also integrated into Google Pay, which can be used for daily consumption of encrypted assets.

Nor is Google’s first foray into the crypto market.

According to a report released by the analysis company CBInsights at the end of 2017, from 2012 to 2017, Google Ventures (abbreviated as"GV"image description

Image: Some of Google’s investment events in the encryption industry, from Zero One Think Tank

While Google Pay still does not support crypto transactions at this time, it will continue to expand its partnerships with crypto companies. Obviously, encryption is part of its future development strategy, and perhaps this is one of the reasons for hiring a former Paypal executive.

Arnold Goldberg served as PayPal's chief product architect and general manager, leading the company's core checkout and merchant services businesses. In 2020, during Goldberg's tenure, Paypal added its encryption business after obtaining a license from the U.S. Department of Financial Services. door. Paypal has since expanded it into sub-app Venmo, creating a "checkout with encryption" feature for its 26 million merchants around the world.

In 2021, this business will also expand to the UK market, providing encrypted trading services for UK customers. Customers can trade major encrypted assets, including BTC, ETH, LTC and BCH.

At the end of the same year, Paypal confirmed that it would launch its own stable currency, tentatively named "PayPal Coin". The internal development of the stablecoin was first discovered by developer Steve Moser in Paypal's iPhone app source code. Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s senior vice president of digital currency, confirmed in an interview: “We are exploring a stablecoin; if we seek to move forward, we will of course work closely with the relevant regulators.”

Although Google's encryption plan did not reveal more, but a sentence in the interview is worth recalling: "Help more activities happen infree and openAccording to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.

risk warning:

According to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.