For several years now Google has been getting for involved in new industries, including telecommunications and more recently, financial services. Their push into banking is picking up some steam with a rumoured incoming launch of a smart debit card.
It is easy to draw immediate parallels to the Apple Card that was launched in 2019. While many of the fundamentals will be similar, the fact that the smart debit card from Google is not a credit card will lead to some interesting differing strategies.
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Google’s card will be created in partnership with Visa and will be available in an electronic wallet so that you can pay with your phone, but also as a physical card. As you would expect, it will be coupled with an app that will track your spending, calculate budgets and so on.
It’ll include some advanced security features. You will have a virtual card number which will be easy to protect – you can reset or block it whenever you’d like, without having to open a new account. If you lose or damage the physical card you can also keep using the same virtual account. According to reports, you will also have control over what data you share with other parties.
Launching new ventures and entering new markets has always been an integral part of Google’s business. Entering the financial services industry could provide a steady stream of revenue akin to the advertising business. Of course, being in advertising, this will generate a lot of behavioural data that they could mine to service their other businesses.
A potential smart debit card is a natural extension of the Google Pay service that the company uses predominantly on Android smartphones. Whether or not people would want to take up an additional card account – or drop one of their currents – remains to be seen. We don’t have specifics about how successful Apple’s Card has been thus far, but with many new fintech players offering traditional banking products with extra convenience, it will only be a matter of time before it’s the norm.
