After disrupting industries ranging from ecommerce to
advertising, big tech appears to be setting its sights on the financial
industry. In August, Apple partnered with Goldman Sachs to roll out the Apple Card,
a shiny titanium credit card designed to be used primarily with Apple Pay in a
mobile ecosystem.

Then Google announced that it was teaming up with banks and
credit unions to offer checking accounts to consumers beginning in 2020. With
these moves, it is clear that big tech is increasingly focusing on the payments
industry.

To learn more about Google’s announcement and what it means
for traditional players in the payments space, PaymentsJournal sat down with
Prasanna Narayan, Head of Product at Ondot Systems, a leading mobile payment
service provider.

Joining us in the conversation was Sarah Grotta, director of
Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.

During the conversation, Narayan and Grotta discussed the
details of Google’s announcement, what big tech can bring to payments, and what
this means for the traditional players in the payments space.

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Google’s
announcement: Hardly surprising, hardly any details

In November, the Wall Street
Journal broke the news that Google, the global tech behemoth, was the latest
tech giant to enter the finance space. Beginning in 2020, Google will be
offering checking accounts in partnership with Citigroup and Stanford Federal
Credit Union.

“I can’t say that bankers or those
in the payments industry were particularly surprised [by the announcement],”
said Grotta. In recent years, many tech companies have moved into payments.

Similar to Apple’s approach of
offering the service through its branded mobile wallet, Google’s checking
accounts will be available through the Google Pay wallet. Other than that,
Grotta pointed out that Google’s announcement is lacking in specifics.

Due to the lack of details,
analysts can only speculate about what this announcement means for the payments
industry and Google’s long-term strategy for approaching the field.

It might be just an opportunity to
provide an account to go along with its peer-to-peer G Pay services, said
Grotta. This would allow Google to offer something that’s similar to the P2P
solutions offered by Venmo or Square.

However, she said this could also