Google has announced that it's obtained Payment Card Industry (PCI) certification for its cloud platform, chasing Microsoft and Amazon into the cloudy payment space.

The Chocolate Factory outlined the certification in this blog post, also announcing WePay as the first developer using the system.

WePay supplied the usual bromides about scalability and reliability, along with noting that it expects using the Google Cloud will help it cut down fraud, and reduce the cost of compliance and support.

The PCI doesn't allow the whole world to go hog-wild developing payment applications for Google Cloud. Rather, it means that other PCI-certified developers can deploy their apps to Mountain View metal without putting their certification at risk.

The move means that someone developing payment apps can use the cloud to scale up for demand rather than having to build their own data centre, meaning they'll only need to worry about when Google has a cloud outage.

The company says its validation against PCI's Data Security Standards (DSS) will “will enable our customers to hold, process, or exchange cardholder information from any branded credit card” on the platform.

It's also offering help for developers who want to put together cloudy payment apps but don't yet have their own PCI accreditation. ®