PayPal Holdings Inc. is looking to outsource some of its IT to the cloud, and Google is at the top of its list of potential providers, according to a report from CNBC that cites sources familiar with the matter.

The report states that PayPal is also considering other cloud vendors, but it makes very clear that Google is its favored choice. If Google does indeed land PayPal, it would be a huge coup for a company whose cloud offering trails rivals like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure by some distance, according to industry analysts.

Google does have a number of well-known customers on its books, including The Coca Cola Co., Best Buy, HTC Corp., zulily Inc. and Spotify AB, but any deal it signs with PayPal could potentially be much bigger.

PayPal’s move comes despite its recent substantial investments in creating a private, OpenStack cloud in its own data centers. Last year, the payment processor firm said it had completed a migration that first began in early 2013, converting almost all of its traffic service to web and API applications, and its mid-tier services to run on its OpenStack cloud.

As such, PayPal is unlikely to want to go all-in on Google’s cloud. The company currently owns or leases 3.5 million square feet of data center space, CNBC reported. With its recent investments in OpenStack, it’s likely that PayPal is more interested in adopting a hybrid cloud approach, along the lines of what Salesforce.com Inc. did when it signed a deal to host some of its infrastructure on AWS in order to speed up its roll-out in new markets, while continuing to operate its own data centers.

It should be noted that until any official announcement is made, it’s not a given that PayPal will ultimately decided to go with Google. PayPal’s Braintree and Venmo brands are both currently hosted on AWS, which means that company is also surely under consideration. For now, neither Google nor Paypal were willing to comment on the story.

CNBC said that even if the deal does go ahead, it’s unlikely PayPal will begin migrating any of its workloads to Google’s cloud this year, as the fourth quarter is a “peak period for online commerce.”

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