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Financial Products

Delivered November 19, 2019. Contributor: Gbolahan G.

Goals

To identify the lastest financial products offered by Apple, Amazon, Google, Alibaba, Wechat, Microsoft, and other prominent companies in the US in the last few years.

Early Findings

Amazon

The company has a long history with financial products and is currently regarded as the "most formidable" tech company to offer financial services.

  • In 2007, the company launched its flagship fintech product, Amazon Pay. This service has undergone several iterations from launch to date. At present, the service helps merchants process payments faster by providing a wallet and payment gateway system which enables shoppers to make purchases using their Amazon account.
  • The company launched Amazon Cash in 2017, a way for consumers to make purchases on Amazon.com using cash deposited at a brick-and-mortar retail partner. The product was primarily targeted at the unbanked population to reduce the barrier to shop on Amazon.
  • The company also began offering loans to small businesses in 2011, while consumer lending was launched in 2015 through Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime offers users the option to pay off the full expense of purchase over six months without interest.
  • According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon began talks with major US banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. about creating a checking-account-like product it could offer its customers. At present, no further information is available regarding the fate of such an offering as Amazon has neither confirmed nor denied the possibility of creating such a service.

Alphabet (Google)

  • In 2018, the company launched a payment app named "Google Pay." The Android app helps users pay in a variety of ways including in-store, in-app, and on-site purchases using cards saved to a user's Google Account. It also allows peer to peer transfer of funds among users.
  • The company has been reported in several media to have an unannounced financial product in the works. According to the Wall Street Journal, the project goes by the name "Cache" and would offer checking accounts in partnership with Citigroup. The service scheduled to launch next year. A Google executive also confirmed the creation of such a product.
  • Other big techs that have announced plans to create a financial product include Uber with Uber Pay and Facebook with Libra.

Summary Of Our Early Findings Relevant To The Goals

  • In our initial hour of research, we were able to identify the latest financial offerings from both Amazon and Alphabet (Google).
  • We were also able to provide some useful insights regarding their upcoming checking account service.

Proposed next steps:

You need to be the project owner to select a next step.
We are suggesting further research that will build upon the initial findings. To that end, we propose research to identify financial products offered by Apple, Alibaba, Wechat, Microsoft, Uber, and Facebook in the US in the last five years. Please feel free to share any other company you'd like us to look into.
Also, in the course of our research, we discovered that banks are starting to propose some countermeasures against big techs offering financial products. We are suggesting research to identify such methods and how the banks are gearing up against the invasion of big techs in finance.