If thats the case then the article is very wrong. Its like saying telco providers ask banks for banking data when you receive SMS notifications of transactions

If thats the case then the article is very wrong. Its like saying telco providers ask banks for banking data when you receive SMS notifications of transactions or use SMS banking. However the devil is in the details - and there are a few tricky details here: - Why would FB be talking to banks about a chat bot integration? Surely the banks can just integrate to FB messenger for business like every other provider. This is pretty standard fare for e-banking as you mention, its been around for years. - Why is it valuable to them? Their share price climbed. If its a straight out chatbot integration then FB cant benefit much - You cant leverage that. Its not an interface into the bank that facebook itself can use to build services on top of and the users data will be covered by banking privacy regulations. At most it increases user retention a little. - Then there is the usual tricky language. “We don’t use purchase data from banks or credit card companies for ads” => Then why am I able to target "online shoppers" as a category in an ad campaign? Overall I think your right though. Even if they are looking at deeper banking connections its all standard with other wallets/platforms like alipay/wechat etc. These platforms are light-years ahead of FB in that respect. They will struggle to catch up in no large part due to the lack of trust after all the privacy issues.