Coupons and Payments - What Do We Have To Lose?

Electronic coupons appear to be all the rage at the moment, with the rush to the front seemingly being led by Groupon. Throwing themselves in to the fight now are Google (with Google Offers) and Facebook (with Facebook Deals) - so there might be an assumption that there is scope for considerable growth in this market. Do banks need to keep a wary eye on the activity in this space? In short, yes.

Banks shouldn't be looking at how they can enter this market itself, but do need to consider how they can ensure that their customers involve the bank in the purchase process. I've previously blogged about how I believed that both Google and Facebook would enter the payments market (Google have since launched an NFC trial, and Facebook has extended its Credits coverage). This means that we potentially have a large volume of customers searching for offers and then paying for that spend through alternative payment methods. I'm sure this type of spending is what banks would rather their customers use their credit cards for, but now risk losing this to the new behemoths.

How long will it be before Google, Facebook or even Apple start offering credit, rather than just acting as the payment aggregators, and why white-label when you've got the muscle to issue?