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PayPal Holdings Inc. and Google Inc. have partnered to leverage their artificial intelligence capabilities in an effort to create what they see as more personalized shopping and payment experiences across their platforms and devices for consumers and merchants.
The deal, announced late Wednesday, will bring together the two companies’ “global payment infrastructure, PayPal’s data-driven personalization, and trusted identity solutions, alongside Google’s AI expertise to deliver new AI experiences,” where AI-powered agents can transact, make purchasing recommendations, and assist users in making commerce intuitive and proactive, PayPal chief executive and president Alex Chriss says by email.
The partnership comes hard on the heels of Google unveiling its Agent Payments Protocol, an open protocol to authenticate consumers initiating a payment using an AI agent when shopping online, earlier this week. PayPal says it and other companies are committed to advocating for adoption of the protocol.
“[Google and PayPal] are committed to delivering frictionless, secure digital-commerce experiences, leveraging AI for smarter, more personalized payment interactions across platforms and devices for consumers and merchants,” Chriss says.
In addition to developing agentic commerce, Google will embed PayPal’s payment technology, such as PayPal branded checkout, Hyperwallet, and PayPal Payouts, across its family of products. Google products include Google Cloud, Google Ads, and Google Play. PayPal will process transactions for those Google products, boosting its role as a trusted payment solution within Google’s core platforms, Chriss says.
More important, integrating its payment offerings with Google products will give PayPal access to a “monstrous consumer base”, which is what every payment company wants, says Cliff Gray, principle at Gray Consulting.
“Payment channels like PayPal want access to riders on their rails, and Google not only has a lot of riders, it has a lot of huge stations [or products] filled with riders,” Gray says.
Getting access to Google’s customer base will help make PayPal a ubiquitous alternative payment network that is as easy and frictionless to use as the Visa and Mastercard networks, according to Gray. “That’s the standard to reach.” Gray adds.
The deal also calls for PayPal to have increased access to Google Cloud, Google’s suite of cloud-computing services that offers cloud-computing infrastructure for developing applications, services for data analytics, machine learning, and networking.
PayPal has had access to Google Cloud since 2021, but more access is a natural next step for PayPal, according to Gray.
“PayPal doesn’t want Google to build a new infrastructure just for them to access Google’s customer base, they want a tried and true infrastructure, which Google Cloud is,” Gray says. “Nor does Google want to build a new infrastructure for PayPal.”
Working with Google Cloud will enable PayPal to reimagine its “technology foundations, applications, and infrastructure to power PayPal’s next-generation commerce and payments platform,” Chriss adds. “And it’s not just Google. Leaders across technology—Perplexity, OpenAI, Anthropic, Salesforce, and more—are developing with our platforms and proving that PayPal’s infrastructure is where the future of commerce is being built. This partnership with Google accelerates that vision and cements PayPal’s role as the trusted platform powering the next generation of global commerce.”
