Coastal Community Bank Partners with Google Pay for Mobile Accounts

Washington-based Coastal Community Bank has announced a partnership with Google to launch digital bank accounts.

The $1 billion bank said it planned to launch digital bank accounts using Google Pay from next year as it sought to respond to the increasing numbers of customers using mobile devices to access banking services.

“Even before branch lobbies were temporarily closed in 2020, banking has been evolving as our clients engage with their finances from the palm of their hand,” Coastal Community Bank said in a statement.

Under the arrangement, Coastal will build and host the accounts using its existing banking infrastructure and “trusted financial and regulatory expertise”.

Google, meanwhile, will be responsible for the user interface and front-end technologies, making use of its “experience in building great user experiences and highly scaled and secure infrastructure”, Coastal said.

The bank said the move would help meet the needs of its growing customer base.

Felix Lin, vice president of Payments Ecosystems at Google, said: “Google is excited to partner with Coastal Community Bank in enabling a digital experience that is equitable for all and meets the evolving needs of a new generation of customers.  We believe that we can use our technology expertise to benefit users, banks and the entire financial ecosystem.”

Coastal’s arrangement with Google comes following a wealth of market research showing a clear trend towards increasing use of mobile and online banking, even before the Covid-19 pandemic forced branches across the US to close.

Research by payments firm ACI Worldwide, published in April, reported that wore than half a trillion digitally enabled real-time payments were expected to be processed over the next five years.

Digital payment methods such as mobile wallets are also expected to see a huge increase in users over the next few years. A report by Allied Market Research in June forecast that the global mobile wallet market would hit $7.6 trillion by 2027, having stood at just over $1 trillion in 2019.

Yesterday, Texas-based Lakeside Bank announced a new partnership with technology provider Jack Henry & Associates to convert the bank’s back office systems to a cloud-based solution.

Lakeside said it wanted to use new technologies to help achieve its aims of growing to a $500 million institution over the next five years while retaining a community bank culture.

Earlier this year, Coastal partnered with cloud-based banking technology provider Neocova to develop an integrated compliance and reporting system.