Banks and disintermediation, Part One

Forrester just produced a report about why Google will not become a bank, but will focus upon leveraging their information services around transactions.

It’s an interesting viewpoint and one I agree with.

As blogged here regularly, Google is unlikely to ever become a bank.  They would lose too many friends.  But Google will become an enrichment service around banking.

What is that enrichment service?

It’s about all the things that make our financial life meaningful.

What we’re buying, where, when, why and how.

Google already does much of this behind the scenes.

They’ve decimated markets, not be copying those markets but by reinventing them.

Take Satellite Navigation services.

Who would have ever thought Google would be my satnav and yet that’s exactly what they are, because they use real-time data to be meaningful.

It’s one step up from Google Maps, to offer real-time maps to destinations.

Then it’s one step up from providing satnav to delivering a car to me.

Driverless cars just gained government approval and, before you know it, the driverless Google car with intel inside is a reality.

That means they disrupt the car industry.

What else is Google up to?

Well, looking at their Labs, they’re looking outside the box.

Cures for cancer, elevators to space, smart homes and robots are all in the pipeline.

Some may think these ideas outlandish, but look at some other outlandish ideas.

Attacking Apple, when Apple dominated the mobile phone space.

Many thought Android a ridiculous idea when it launched, due to the virtual monopoly of the iPhone explosion.

Now, the majority of folks are using Android, thanks to Samsung, and Apple’s shine has tarnished somewhat.

Take the idea of moving the internet into your sightline with a pair of glasses that are networked?

Many scoff at this idea, saying that these guys are Glassholes, and yet slowly and inevitably it is moving mainstream.

Does this mean that Google displaces the opticians market?

Possibly or, rather, it enhances the opticians market as we’ll all need a new pair of glasses with intel inside.

So Google is not a threat to banking per se, but more likely to be a leverage partner.

Integrate bank APIs into Google services and you’ll see your Google Calendar sprinkled with your financial transactions day-by-day.

Rather than logging onto your bank account, you just search “Spain” and you will see all of your spending on the last holiday.

Google Sync with Sage will ensure all your accounting and expense recording is managed automatically, with no manual effort required.

And Google will of course inform you of relevant services, so you need never look for an ATM or branch, it’s all just there in Google Maps.

This is where Google will strike to the heart of banking, as the bank becomes a back-end information feed to Google rather than the other way around.

Google enriches our lives with information: that should be their mission statement (their mission statement is actually “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”).

And with an annual R&D budget near $8 billion, they’ve got the deep pockets to do this well (as have Facebook, the nearest Google competitor out there, who have just stated that Facebook Messenger will enable payments).

If you’re interested, btw, here are the top 10 Google R&D Projects.