Google has pulled the plug on its much-anticipated Plex checking account, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The decision to abandon Plex, which had built up a waiting list of hundreds of thousands, has been made because Google wants to focus on "delivering digital enablement for banks and other financial services providers rather than us serving as the provider of these services".
News of Plex first emerged in late 2019, when Google teamed up with Citi and a small Stanford University-affiliated credit union on a planned checking account within the Google Pay app.
Google later signed up several more FS partners for the co-branded, FDIC-insured digital accounts that were to be built on top of the banks' existing infrastructure and launched this year.
Citi told the WSJ that it has signed up more than 400,000 people to a Plex waitlist, while several partners, including BM Technologies (previously called BankMobile), were under the impression as late as this week that Plex was still going ahead.