The media reported on Friday that Google is abandoning plans to provide bank account services directly to users. Google has been seeking to enter the personal banking business in recent years. Google said in 2020 that it will cooperate with Citigroup and the Stanford Federal Credit Union to allow users to open bank accounts through its Google Pay application from 2021.
At the time, Google said it would provide a service called “Plex” that would provide users with savings accounts with no monthly fees, overdraft fees, or minimum balance requirements. According to reports, Google missed many deadlines for the project, and the departure of the Google Pay executive who oversaw the project also led to the collapse of its plan.
A Google spokesperson confirmed the report to the media but declined to comment on the impact of the departure of the above-mentioned executives. A Google spokesperson said in an email: Our cooperation with our partners makes it very clear that consumers need simple, seamless and secure digital payments for online and offline transactions. We are updating our methods to focus primarily on Provide digital support for banks and other financial service providers, not as a provider of these services.
Caesar Sengupta, a former vice president and head of Google Payments at Google, described the company’s banking plan in 2020 and stated that the company “is seeking to make banking more connected to the mobile-first generation. According to its LinkedIn profile, Sengupta left Google in March to start his own financial technology company, Arbo Works. Since then, he seems to have hired several Google employees for his company.
