The news: Google Cloud is creating its own blockchain, named Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL), for payments and financial products.

Why this matters: GCUL will operate as a neutral infrastructure layer that can also enable Python-based smart contracts, per a LinkedIn post by Google’s Web3 head of strategy, Rich Widmann. 

This means any financial institution or intermediary can use GCUL to access Google’s massive scale: billions of Google users and hundreds of institutional clients through Google Cloud and Ads. 

Google’s edge: Google likely is betting that it’s better positioned to serve clients and financial institutions than Stripe’s Tempo or Circle’s Arc because its blockchain service simplifies integration for multiple currencies and assets, stabilizes fees, and is designed for safety—as a private and permissioned system, it benefits from Google’s tech security stack.

Our take: GCUL could be the first step toward Google issuing its own stablecoin. 

• Google could incentivize stablecoin payments for the billions of dollars in revenues it raises from ad or cloud services to shave off incremental fees from traditional payment avenues.
• It could also integrate the stablecoin and its blockchain into Google Pay, making crypto payment accessible to millions of existing Google Pay users and enabling acceptance anywhere that takes Google Pay. Merchants may be more keen to accept the payment type given the GCUL’s ability to issue smart contracts—critical to reduce friction for stablecoin-based refunds, a key hang-up for the return and refund process for crypto-based payments.  

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