Coinbase Becomes First US Crypto Exchange Enabling Google Pay
The latest announcement reports that the US’s largest crypto exchange Coinbase is now enabling users to spend Bitcoin using Google Pay via their mobile phones.
Coinbase customers’ s visa debit card, the “Coinbase Card” is now enabled with Google Pay. Coinbase customers can easily link their Coinbase cards to their Google Pay wallet, which will enable them to spend Bitcoins quickly in shops. Following the announcement, Coinbase co-founder and CEO, Brian Armstrong informed his 324.9K followers that they can use “Coinbase card with Google Pay”, adding ‘UK only for now, hopefully coming to other countries soon”.
Accordingly, the exchange highlights that it can expand the Google Pay support to several other countries in late 2020. The report elaborates it as follows;
“To get started with Coinbase Card, download the Android app today and securely sign in using your Coinbase account. Once a Card has been requested, customers can add their card to Google Pay and start spending their crypto, before the physical Coinbase Card arrives. The Card app is also available for iOS users.“
Essentially, the exchange launched the Coinbase Card back in April 2019 which is available across 14 European countries including; the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Norway, Finland, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark, and Sweden.
With the availability of this physical card, Coinbase customers are free to transact in 10 different digital currencies in shops that currently accept Visa payments. Besides physical cards, users can also access the virtual version of the same card on their phone by linking to Google Pay. In an announcement, the exchange states that the exchange has become the first company “to enable users to make mobile payments powered by their crypto balances”.
As soon as the card is linked to the Google Pay wallet, it emulates the card for offline purchases through the device’s NFC chip. This facility prompts the extra time which, users, otherwise have to spend while using the physical card. Noticeably, the physical card is also accompanied by Coinbase’s application – iOS, as well as Android. And now Google Pay, is an added advantage for android users. It’s worth noting that the App Pay still isn’t supported as the company didn’t confirm the integration yet.
