Google Payment Ireland, an Irish subsidiary of the search giant’s payment division, recorded a drop in revenue in 2023, from €30.6 million to €23.1 million, newly-filed accounts show.
Its expenses rose from €39.1 million to €42.7 million, giving it a gross loss for the year of €19.5 million, up from €8.4 million a year earlier.
The company partly blamed the rise in costs on an increase in credit card fees incurred during the period, the accounts note.
However, the company booked €18.2 million in interest receivable from a variety of sources, which pushed its pretax profit to €3.5 million in 2023. This pushed its accumulated profits to €9.7 million at the year end.
The accounts state that the interest came in part from cash and cash equivalents on the company’s balance sheet, as well as from interest income on intracompany receivables – that is, money it owes to other companies within the group.
Google Payment Ireland had €177.7 million in cash on its balance sheet, and owed €164.5 million to related group companies.
Google was authorised as a payment institution in Ireland in 2019, allowing it to provide financial services to consumers and business in Ireland and Europe under the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2).
Before that authorisation, the company was only permitted to offer limited financial services through its Google Pay digital wallet.
Google Payment Ireland processes payments for other Google group companies, for which it earns revenue within the group.
It can also offer digital payment services to other companies and businesses through Google Play, the company’s app store for certified devices run on its Android operating system.
The accounts note that in May of this year, “the board of directors approved a proposal for the company to extend the provision of regulated merchant acquiring and payments processing services to Cloud Marketplace customers in the European Economic Area”.
Google Payments revenues are a small fraction of the much larger revenue earned by Google Ireland, which at the end of 2022 had total turnover of €72.6 billion. Its accumulated profits stood at €7 billion.
At that time, Google Ireland had 4,832 employees and a total wage bill of €936.6 million, made up of €647.5 million in wages and salaries, €67.6 million in social welfare costs, €196 million in share-based payments and €25.5 million in pension expenses.
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