By 2023, some Google Cloud users will be able to pay for cloud services with crypto.
This is because Google Cloud has partnered with Coinbase to make that happen.
This news comes right on the tail of the announcement that Google made about building a cloud region in South Africa—its first on the continent.
The payment feature will be available in early 2023, but it will not roll out to all Cloud customers at once. Google Cloud will make this available to only a subset of its customers and roll it out to all the others over time.
This is not because Google is wary of cryptocurrencies—on the contrary, despite the crypto winter, the Alphabet-born company is keen on exploring the Web3 front in hopes of gaining an edge over its competitors (Microsoft and AWS), which are currently more profitable than it but do not yet accept crypto payments.
Although this is good news, there is a slim chance that any of these Google Cloud’s African clients will be included in the group of users who will experience the cryptocurrency payment platform for the first time.
Some of Google’s Cloud’s major clients in Africa, like Safaricom and MTN, e-commerce startups like Takealot and Konga, Kenya’s Twiga Foods, and others, won’t be able to use the crypto payment integration.
But with the exception of MTN, which purchased land in the metaverse, none of these businesses has shown a particularly keen interest in Web3 or cryptocurrencies. This may be because the majority of African governments have expressed their disapproval of cryptocurrencies and punished those who break their laws prohibiting them.
