In their short lives, the likes of search engine giant Google and social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook have enjoyed spectacular success. Prodigies of the digital age, each has built a user base that is both truly mass and truly global. Masters, as they are, of the art of personalisation and technology integration, it seems increasingly logical that such sites have a great deal to offer the rather staid, anonymous world of online banking (see technology story).
In particular, Google – an online superpower that seems to move effortlessly across the web – is a strong contender in this regard. Having created the internet’s most sophisticated and popular search engine, Google has moved seamlessly into e-mail, instant messaging, word processing, spreadsheets, price comparison and enterprise software, among other activities. The news, therefore, that some banks are now looking to Google potentially to provide a platform by which to deliver an enhanced, feature-rich online banking experience should come as no surprise.
First steps
Google is already a provider of financial services. In 2006, it launched its online payment service, Google Checkout. Like PayPal, Google’s payment facility allows users to buy quickly and easily from stores across the web, and track all their orders and delivery information from one place.
Google continues to surprise with its bold and irrepressible drive to transform any number of functions into a convenient, easy-to-use web service. Few at Microsoft, for example, would have envisaged that Google would begin to encroach upon its word-processing monopoly, or indeed upon its other ‘killer apps’, Outlook and Excel.
The prospect that Google might in due course side-step again into the world of online banking – whether directly or in partnership – does not now seem unrealistic. Many technology innovators agree: N Ganapathy Subramaniam, president of Tata Consultancy Services Financial Solutions, is one such individual. In future, he suggests, the financial services players will be forced to assume much of the functionality to which Google already lays claim. As such, he says, the world may be facing the prospect of “Google bank”.
