(Daily Mail) Marking the latest tech giant to enter the personal finance arena, Google plans to launch a checking account product sometime next year.
Google will offer personal checking accounts in partnership with Citigroup and a small credit union at Stanford University, a source familiar with Google’s plans said on Wednesday.
The details of the project, code-named Cache, were first reported by the Wall Street Journal and follow moves by tech heavyweights Apple and Facebook into the financial industry this year.
Checking accounts would offer Google a rich source of data on consumer spending, potentially allowing the company to track the effectiveness of online ads all the way through to the point of sale.
Google’s initiative is just the latest tech play in the financial sector, prompting concerns about how the big tech companies will use their massive digital influence in other areas of business and economic infrastructure.
Facebook´s plan to launch the ‘Libra’ digital coin has been met with a chorus of skepticism from regulators, worried about money laundering and the security of transactions and user data.
On Tuesday, Facebook also launched a unified payment service through which users across its platforms can make payments without exiting the app, named Facebook Pay, which is separate from its Libra project.
In August, Apple launched a branded credit card developed in partnership with Goldman Sachs.
