As an advertiser on Google, I received an email from them this morning advising that they were updating their policy on ads for financial services to UK consumers.  Some of the wording really made me sit up and re-read it carefully ! 

I'll paste an image of the whole notice at the end of this post, but I think the phrase which is most important is when they say:

"As part of the verification process, advertisers must demonstrate that they are authorized by the UK Financial Conduct Authority or qualify for one of the exemptions described in the UK Financial Services verification page. Please note that this requirement covers financial services regulated by and not regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority." (my bold)

What Does It Mean ?

I interpret this as very clearly aimed at Binance and similar businesses who trade not just tokens and coins, but derivatives, options and futures based on crypto currency. It is a way to stop them getting around the UK FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) restriction on Binance offering crypto derivative services in the UK. It doesn't change the policy when it comes to standard crypto, so it isn't a blanket ban or anything like that - it's remarkably well targeted and carefully written.

A company the size of Google has legal and compliance departments and multiple levels of management all verifying what the copy-writers on the front line are coming up with. That's not normally a fast process. To act on this within 48 hours of the FCA's own announcement makes me wonder if they either knew in advance or have co-ordinated with the FCA on this.

Google and the FCA are "old world" organisations whose purpose is to gather and exercise direct control over data. Decentralised blockchain technology is antithetical to their interests, although I'm sure they'd happily run centrally controlled blockchains if they wanted to commit the processing power.

Is It Even Relevant ?

But I am uncertain whether this is part of an overall policy drive by Google, or (which I suspect is more likely) just a nod to protect themselves from criticism by the government and the fines which would inevitably go with it.

Online ads of the type they are restricting are likely to be aimed at relative newcomers to crypto, and it could be argued that they need some protection because they haven't got the level of understanding (or appreciation of the risks) that more experienced investors have. Those more experienced investors are more likely to make their decisions based not on Google adverts (which won't be seen much anyway if they are using a browser like Brave), but will do their own research. With more and more people using VPN's, I also wonder how effectively Google will be able to correctly identify where consumers are located.

So I feel that the impact of this won't be on consumers or foreign entities, it'll be mainly felt by the smaller UK-based financial services advertisers, who will now have an extra set of administrative hoops they have to jump through, which helps to reinforce the current the dominance of the big players.

Also, just to make clear - although I advertise on Google, it is for tangible products sold by my own business, I don't sell financial services of any kind !

Below is Google's notice, in image form to remove any tracking they might have hidden in it.....