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Replace SWIFT with Bitcoin / Blockchain?:) On a more serious note, from personal experience of developing and implementing a SWIFT gateway software product, SWIFT already mandates security controls for interconnection of banking systems with SWIFT. If a bank hasn't implemented these security controls, will SWIFT let it connect to its network? Well, that's the $81 million question, isn't it?

Is Google planning to enter fintech via payday loans?!

Mobile Wallets: Fix What's Broken - And It Ain't Payments

Even by that standard, I find it hard to understand what problem a local digital wallet will solve. In this day and age of globalization, sticking to local is the fastest way to irrelevance. Especially in payments, where ubiquity is a critical success factor. Just ask Bling Nation.

By the same token, Google should stop charging for its ads. Volumes will soar. So will profits. I'll save a big bundle I pay for Google Ads every month. But I don't live in that dream world. 

In the real world, Revenue = Rate * Volume. No matter how high Volume gets, if Rate = 0, Revenue = 0. Since Profit = Revenue - Costs, Profit = 0 or negative, as long as Revenue = 0. 

So, high volumes by itself does not generate profits.

Over the years, members of my family and I have opened scores of bank accounts in several countries including India, USA, UK, etc. We have never paid any fees for any of those accounts. If Google or someone else enters the market believing in a hypothetical world where all banks charge for a bank account, they won't last a day.

Google is a publisher. Things like impressions, data, matter to its core business model. Banks are in the deposit taking and lending business. Things like impressions, data don't matter to its core business model.

Banks earn interchange every time someone pays a merchant via PayPal via credit card or funds a PayPal account via credit card. ICYMI, TransferWise is increasingly executing cross-border transactions via traditional banking channel and paying fees to banks because it's increasingly unable to find matching transactions on either shore. Therefore, I fail to see how banks have lost anything to PayPal or TransferWise. On the contrary, the way I see it, banks are shedding customers, not losing customers.

Sorry but AFAIK every successful business that optimizes its processes does so to cut costs and increase profits, not to eliminate existing sources of revenues. Doing free service accelerates the race to the bottom and I'm glad banks aren't going down that path. I meant Google AdWords in the broadest sense of the term i.e. ads appearing outside Google SERP viz. AdSense ads appearing on other Alphabet properties like YouTube and GMail as well as on third party properties like Amazon, Flipkart, blogs, etc. Frankly, I doubt if Sergey Brin / Larry Page themselves know what percentage of their revenues will come from ads 10 years from now, so I won't bother hazarding a guess.

"They charge fees for almost everything, although they are not poor companies running on losses." Actually maybe that's how banks are not poor companies running on losses? It's not a secret that Google makes nearly 90% of revenues and 98% of profits from only one product, Google AdWords. 

A spate of print ads for digibank from DBS Bank promises that you can "open an account in just 90 seconds". When I went to the app's Play Store page, I was shocked to find out that "account" means e-wallet account, not bank account. With more e-wallets on my smartphone than I know what to do with, I quickly bailed out. Next time when a bank says "open an account", I shouldn't assume it's a bank account.

@RichardSanders + 1. 

I too had an extremely tough time getting Internet Banking for my company's bank account despite having had it for over 5 years on my personal bank account. I had to finally escalate to Branch Manager to get things moving. 

I applied for an ATM card for my company's bank account. As soon as I sensed a repeat of the above torturous process, I withdrew my application - I didn't want to waste my time and I also thought cash would be dead soon anyway:). http://qwt.io/s_ketharaman/z6Dx

Uh oh, there goes my prediction that cash will die in 187 years.

The Death Of Cash Is At Least 190 Years Away 

Digital transformation is largely driven by the need to enhance customer experience. It's but natural that progress on digital transformation will be steered by a region's commitment to CX. If Sushil S / Accenture were to repeat the same study in Asia Pacific or USA, I'm quite sure that the results will be quite different from what they found in Europe.