Expect a FAANG Bank
By Teamspirit on Monday, 25 March 2019
With Silicon Valley giants already offering payments, transfers, and digital wallets, the race is on between the FAANGs (the four high-performing tech stocks – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) to launch a bank.
In the last two years we have seen Facebook announce partnerships with PayPal, Amex and Citibank, allowing users to connect their social and banking accounts. Google now offers loans as a recruitment tool in the ever-growing Indian market. And through its partnership with Goldman Sachs, you can now apply for an Apple credit card, which provides an integrated consumer experience through online and high street retailing.
Amazon appears to have stolen the lead, offering credit cards with rewards, short-term loans to sellers, and trialling Amazon Cash in US stores, which allows customers to make cash deposits. More importantly, this offering supports its core business. When surveyed, 64% of Prime users said they would open a bank account if they got 2% discounts.
With the Chinese tech giant Alibaba already a top 10 global bank by market cap, surely in 2019 we can expect to see one of the tech giants finally break through to launch a bank.
• Brand is more important than ever. Existing financial service brands have to build and reinforce trust with customers, while always demonstrating their relevance and usefulness.
• Traditional banks need to deliver a distinct customer experience, in order to insulate themselves against the tech giants.
• Banks need to partner with, or acquire, tech companies, to improve their infrastructure, to allow them to offer customers the same frictionless convenience and simplicity that they have grown used to with the tech giants.