Google, not satisfied with just being the internet’s search engine, web browser, analytics tool, productivity application, and virtual assistant of choice has now set their sets on the next step in their plan for world domination: Banking.
With Apple and Facebook diving into the world of finance, Google wants a piece of the pie too. The Silicon Valley tech behemoths is partnering up with not one but two banks, Citigroup and the Stanford Federal Credit Union in order to provide a “smart checking” bank account in the coming year.
The project, nicknamed Cache, will see the conventional checking account integrated with Google in some sort of way. What way exactly remains a mystery but according to Craig Ewer, a Google spokesman, they’re looking to present it as an extension of the Google Pay digital payments system. The goal? “helping banks customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting tools.”
I don’t know about you guys but this announcement raises eyebrows for me. Google already has pretty much all of your digital data, now it wants your hard earned cash too? Sketchy. Of course though, Google has promised that it will not be selling account holders’ financial data but can we really trust Google with data as sensitive as this? My money is on the company snooping on that data and using it to further cement it’s dominance over the internet.
I think Google’s (and America in general) goal here is to replicate the financial ecosystem created by Chinese giants Alipay and WeChat Pay. In less than a decade, the Chinese have managed to revolutionize the way people handle money. Making money transactions using your mobile phone is completely normalized in China, to the point where cold hard cash actually gets you dirty looks from merchants.
It may be a bitter pill to swallow for the USA but when it comes to technology and it’s infrastructure, Uncle Sam is playing catch up. What Google is trying to do makes sense, but with it’s track record of antitrust investigations, and the scrutiny that Facebook has come under for it’s venture into the financial world, Google will surely have a hard time trying to convince governments to get behind this.
