The platforms have robust infrastructure

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Most tech companies are more cautious than Facebook. That’s why you see collaborations, not competition, with banks — things like co-branded credit cards and checking accounts. Big tech firms get the “locked in” consumer and business benefits, without the regulatory headaches. Caesar Sengupta, Google’s payments chief, told The Wall Street Journal that the search giant plans to partner with banks to launch products — a somewhat pointed statement, a month after Zuckerberg was questioned again.

US consumers present another barrier. You may not like your spain number data bank, but finding an alternative is a big challenge.

“You have to give them a very big incentive,” says Arielle O’Shea, a banking expert at Nerdwallet. “And even that might not be enough.”

There are some disruptors: payment apps like Venmo, as well as so-called alternative banks that offer basic digital services with low fees and lower overhead than traditional banks. They tend to prey on customers who have had poor experiences with incumbent banks. But few startups have made that model work at scale. The business relies on squeezing profits out of the lowest-margin services. They have also had reliability issues. Take the recent outage at Chime, the largest alternative bank to date, in which millions of customers were suddenly unable to buy groceries or put down a deposit on new apartments. The blame lies with the startup that processes Chime’s payments.

The tech giants could probably do a better job of providing these services. and data that helps them predict the services you need, O'Shea said. They don't even need to make money from banking products per se. Amazon will save you money when you open a checking account because it will avoid the fees you pay when you use your account from somewhere else.