No, Facebook doesn't want to be your online bank. Not yet.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

With more than 900 million monthly active users, the question is why Facebook wouldn't aspire to be an online bank? Given Mark Zuckerberg's ambitions to build out the platform to the point where social infuses as many aspects of our daily online existence as possible, it's hardly a radical notion.

So it was that a report surfaced earlier today to the effect that Facebook is working with Australia's Commonwealth Bank on a way to allow bank transactions "to third parties as well as Facebook friends through the social media channel." That inspired the usual scrum but let's hold on before jumping to (inevitable) conclusions.

The story includes a couple of quotes from David Robinson, the director of global marketing solutions, U.S. financial services at Facebook. Participating at a panel last month before the Securities Industries and Financial Markets Association, Robinson said: "There are certain things, whether it's financial services, or banking where I don't necessarily want my friends to know exactly what I'm doing, right?...I want to be able to go in and have an experience with my adviser or my bank and have that be a one-on-one experience."

Read into that what you will but there's a worl... [Read more]