Price Comparison Websites: Go Compare
Plus: Bank of America, Toast, Financial Fraud in Payments Systems
Turn on any TV or radio in the UK and after a while you will be confronted with an advert for a price comparison website. There are four of them: Moneysupermarket, GoCompare, Confused.com and Comparethemarket. Between them, they spend over £150 million a year on traditional media advertising and a lot more on other marketing. A few years ago, Go Compare’s TV advert – featuring Welsh opera singer Gio Compario – was voted the most annoying in the UK; Comparethemarket’s ad was not far behind.
In some ways these companies are a precursor to the super app that is gaining increasing traction in financial services. This week, PayPal launched a one-stop shop allowing customers to access credit, savings accounts and other financial services from a single app. Like super apps, price comparison sites provide an interface between the customer and the market – a first port of call for customers to access financial services. But the mechanism is quite different, as are the economics.
Price comparis…