Google exec says company will ‘evolve’ with user, merchant demand for crypto payments

Google is shuffling the proverbial deck on the payments front, tapping a former PayPal executive to lead that division and, as Bloomberg reports it, “set a new course.”

The move to hire former PayPal senior vice president and chief product architect Arnold Goldberg comes months after Google discontinued efforts to form a service akin to digital banking, according to Bloomberg.

Bill Ready, Google’s president of commerce, told the publication that the tech giant wants to broaden the scope of its payments efforts across the spectrum of consumer-facing use cases.

Crypto-related efforts referenced in the interview with Ready highlighted Google’s relationships with industry companies Coinbase and BitPay, both of which announced last year that their customers could connect their respective crypto debit cards to Google Pay’s app. Ready reportedly said that more linkages of this kind are on the horizon.

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

Google moved to revamp its advertising policies for crypto exchanges and wallet providers last year, though it still maintains restrictions on topics like initial coin offerings.