Google Pay Steps Up Digital Banking Plans For 2021 With New Partners

We are living in an increasingly online and mobile world but even if we are able to buy our foods and supplies online, sooner or later all of us will have to make our way to a bank for some face to face transactions. Given today's global situation, however, that has also become increasingly risky and people have started looking into online and digital banking solutions. Presuming we make it that far, Google Pay will be offering one such alternative next year.

Google's plans for a digital banking service as part of Google Pay was discovered late last year. Coincidentally, it was also around that time that Apple launched its own Apple Card plastic in collaboration with Goldman Sachs. The still unbranded Google digital bank, however, will go beyond a simple credit card and will even be treating its partners differently.

Google will simply be the "front-end" to digital banking services while money will be managed by its partner institutions, all of them insured by FDIC. The partnerships are also more upfront rather than a simple footnote, with the names of the likes BBVA and BankMobile, two of six new partners in this endeavor, being displayed and used more prominently in contrast to the seemingly uneasy PR situation Apple has found itself in with Goldman Sachs.

The partnership is a very symbiotic one. For BBVA, for example, this Google digital banking service aligns with its Open Platform and makes its own brand more appealing to a new generation of online-only and mobile-first consumers. BankMobile is similarly targeting a younger generation, college students especially, whose lifestyles make traditional banking transactions inconvenient.

Google will provide not only a way for these users to manage their money from their phones but also give financial insight and tools for managing their budget. That's thanks to the treasure trove of data that Google will, of course, be able to get its hands on through these partnerships. Other than those partners, which now include Bank Mobile, BBVA USA, BMO Harris, Citi, Coastal Community Bank, First Independence Bank, SEFCU, and SFCU, few details about its Google digital bank are still known, including when in 2021 it will launch in the US.