Google has announced joining hands with the digital exchange marketplace Bakkt to facilitate crypto-asset transactions into its network. The partnership will enable Bakkt consumers to integrate their digital cards with Google Pay for purchasing goods both online and in stores, as well as on any Google Pay-accepted platform. To process the payment, crypto-assets such as Bitcoin [BTC] will be converted into their respective fiat currencies.
According to the official blog post, Bakkt will utilize Google Cloud’s services to expand its reach across institutions and retailers in the United States as well as boost the usability of digital assets to cater to the growing and evolving consumer demand and preferences.
CEO of Bakkt, Gavin Michael said,
“This partnership is a testament to Bakkt’s strong position in the digital asset marketplace, to empower consumers to enjoy their digital assets in a real-time, secure, reliable manner. Additionally, partnering with Google Cloud will enable us to continue to build a best-in-class, innovative platform that can undoubtedly scale to meet the needs of millions of users.”
After the partnership announcement, Google Cloud President Kirstein Kliphouse noted that the move will utilize the natural synergy between the two companies in terms of scalability and technology. Furthermore, Bakkt in addition to Artificial Intelligence [AI], Machine learning [ML], and geolocation function, aims to develop a new analytics tool to gain location-specific key business information powered by the Google cloud. The aforementioned information will provide crucial business insights into their consumer’s psychology and help curate user-specific loyalty redemption packages.
Bakkt to go public ideally this month
Bakkt was founded in 2018 by Intercontinental Exchange, a subsidiary of the New York Stock Exchange [NYSE] as a cold storage provider of Bitcoin. The main purpose of its inception was to allow institutional players and market participants to purchase, sell, store as well as spend cryptocurrency and digital assets in a regulated environment.
Earlier in September this year, Bakkt foundation and VPC Impact Acquisition holdings had broken the news to merge and become a single public traded company. On September 18, this year US security and Exchange Commission [SEC] approved the merger and paved the way to operate as a publicly owned firm.
TronWeekly had also reported about the firm managing to fetch the 26th BitLicense from New York in March 2021. The development was significant as the state of NY has been known to be not precisely crypto-friendly.