Google LLC wants a bigger slice of the financial services market.

In a Wall Street Journal interview published today, Caesar Sengupta, the head of the company’s Payments group, revealed that his unit is building a checking account service for consumers. The offering is codenamed “Cache” internally and is expected to go online as soon as next year.

There are some parallels with the checking account service Amazon.com Inc. is rumored to be developing. According to a 2018 report, the online retail giant hopes to team up with establish banks on the project and entrust them with much of the responsibility for managing users’ money. Google, too, plans to relegate most financial and compliance tasks to outside institutions it will partner with.

The main benefit of this approach is speed. By relying on the infrastructure of establish banks, Google can bring Cache to market faster and avoid some of the regulatory hurdles involved in becoming a full-fledged financial services provider. 

Sengupta said the company is exploring several value-added features it could  offer for users. Google is among others considering ways to operate loyalty card programs and has weighed whether to waive checking account fees, the executive said. 

The service could enable the search giant to expand its reach into yet another part of consumers’ lives  and gain access to valuable information about their spending patterns. To assuage privacy concerns, Sengupta told the WSJ that Google won’t share checking account data with advertisers. But Cache may still draw regulatory scrutiny given that Google is currently the subject of a multistate antitrust investigation.

The Alphabet Inc. subsidiary already has a limited presence in the financial services market. Its Google Pay digital wallet allows users to shop on e-commerce websites and apps using their Google account, as well as make purchases in physical stores with their mobile devices. The service will in the future likely integrate with Cache checking accounts similarly to how Apple Inc.’s rival digital wallet connects to the Apple Card.

Google is now in the process of recruiting banking partners for the project. Initial backers include Citigroup Inc. and Stanford Federal Credit Union, a small credit union with ties to Stanford University. 

Photo: Google