According to a report this week from the Wall Street Journal, Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) is asking major US banks to share financial information about their customers, including checking account balances, shopping habits, and recent credit card transactions.
The social media giant hopes to access this data to expand its user services to encompass finances. Facebook denies that it is "actively asking financial services companies for financial transaction data." Facebook instead said it only wants to form partnerships with credit card companies and banks to offer customer service through its Messenger app and let users manage their accounts through Facebook. Integrating with banks in this fashion will let users "keep track of their transaction data like account balances, receipts, and shipping updates," Facebook says. Facebook has also denied that any the data it acquires will be used for personalized ad targeting.
In fact, Facebook already has such partnerships with American Express (NYSE: AXP), Paypal (NASDAQ: PYPL), and Mastercard (NYSE: MA) - the only news here is that Facebook is trying to expand to larger banks like Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), US Bancorp (NYSE: USB), and Citigroup (NYSE: C). And Facebook isn't the only company trying to form these partnerships: Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) are similarly reaching out to banks and credit card companies so they can offer financial services on their voice-operated devices.
But some banks are reluctant to partner with Facebook, particularly after the recent Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, which affected 87 million of Facebook's users. Banks worry that Facebook would not be secure place for sensitive financial information. Indeed, one potential partner, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), already ended talks with Facebook over these concerns. But Facebook has also said that some banks have approached them to form partnerships, hoping to add Messenger as another avenue to generate user interactions.
With Facebook recently reporting the slowest growth in a quarter since 2011, these partnerships may prove important to staying relevant and ahead of the competition. Indeed, Facebook's stock price jumped 3.5% after WSJ's report, though some experts think the importance of the move to Facebook's future has been overrated even if it ultimately yields successful partnerships. It's unclear if Facebook can overcome its current reputation for lax security.