diff --git a/packages/opentelemetry-plugin-grpc/src/grpc.ts b/packages/opentelemetry-plugin-grpc/src/grpc.ts
index e01f2aeb3be..9123a2ce2f9 100644
--- a/packages/opentelemetry-plugin-grpc/src/grpc.ts
+++ b/packages/opentelemetry-plugin-grpc/src/grpc.ts
@@ -14,7 +14,11 @@
  * limitations under the License.
  */
 
-import { BasePlugin } from '@opentelemetry/core';
+import {
+  BasePlugin,
+  getExtractedSpanContext,
+  setExtractedSpanContext,
+} from '@opentelemetry/core';
 import {
   CanonicalCode,
   Span,
@@ -22,6 +26,7 @@ import {
   SpanKind,
   SpanOptions,
   Status,
+  Context,
 } from '@opentelemetry/api';
 import * as events from 'events';
 import * as grpcTypes from 'grpc';
@@ -122,24 +127,25 @@ export class GrpcPlugin extends BasePlugin<grpc> {
     }
   }
 
-  private _getSpanContext(metadata: grpcTypes.Metadata): SpanContext | null {
-    const metadataValue = metadata.getMap()[GRPC_TRACE_KEY] as Buffer;
-    // Entry doesn't exist
-    if (!metadataValue) {
-      return null;
-    }
-    return this._tracer.getBinaryFormat().fromBytes(metadataValue);
+  private _getSpanContext(
+    metadata: grpcTypes.Metadata
+  ): SpanContext | undefined {
+    return getExtractedSpanContext(
+      this._tracer.getHttpTextFormat().extract(Context.TODO, metadata.getMap())
+    );
   }
 
   private _setSpanContext(
     metadata: grpcTypes.Metadata,
     spanContext: SpanContext
   ): void {
-    const serializedSpanContext = this._tracer
-      .getBinaryFormat()
-      .toBytes(spanContext);
-    const buffer = Buffer.from(serializedSpanContext);
-    metadata.set(GRPC_TRACE_KEY, buffer);
+    const carrier = {};
+    this._tracer
+      .getHttpTextFormat()
+      .inject(setExtractedSpanContext(Context.TODO, spanContext), carrier);
+    for (const [k, v] of Object.entries(carrier)) {
+      metadata.set(k, v as string);
+    }
   }
 
   private _patchServer() {