Big tech groups are now working to cut out banks as the middlemen, threatening to turn legacy¹ financial institutions into the dumb pipes that feed the back-end infrastructure² of firms such as Amazon, Google or Facebook.

如今，大型科技集团正努力把作为中间人的银行挤掉，威胁要把这种历史悠久的金融机构变成向亚马逊、谷歌或脸书等公司提供后台基础设施的“无声通道”。

"The days when a single channel for financial services was controlled by banks are coming to an end," said David Parker, head of banking³ at Accenture UK and Ireland.

埃森哲英国和爱尔兰地区银行业主管戴维·帕克表示：“银行控制唯一金融服务渠道的日子就要结束了。”

"Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and many others who have much more intimacy⁴ with their customers will be able to demand and create better services", said Parker.

帕克称：“谷歌、亚马逊、脸书及其他许多与客户拥有亲密得多的关系的公司，将有能力要求和打造更好的服务。”

"In the short term, this will be the equivalent of small fish nibbling⁵ away at parts of a bank's services, but in the longer-term, most banks are worried".

“从短期来看，这相当于小鱼在蚕食银行的部分服务，但从更长远的角度来看，大多数银行都很担忧。”

"It will become attractive for tech firms to pick off parts of the bank - Amazon lending to small merchants, Google putting a buy button in its adverts⁶, Facebook facilitating money transfers."

“对科技公司而言，取代银行的各个部分将变得有吸引力——亚马逊向小商家提供借贷，谷歌在广告上添加购买按钮，脸书使转账更为便利。”

Amazon's payment service is already advancing steadily⁷: today, it allows online vendors⁸ on its Marketplace site to take payments across the US and Europe, and also makes small loans to its US merchants through its B2B arm, Amazon Business. The division was recently launched in Germany, although it does not make loans in Europe yet.

亚马逊支付服务已经在稳步推进：现在，亚马逊旗下平台Marketplace上的在线商家可以在美国和欧洲范围内收款，亚马逊还通过旗下的企业对企业(B2B)平台Amazon Business向美国商家发放小额贷款。这个业务分支已经开始在德国运营，尽管还未在欧洲开展贷款业务。

In 2016, the e-commerce firm rolled out "Pay with Amazon" across France, Italy and Spain — a PayPal-like service that allows users to pay for non-Amazon purchases including government services, insurance and travel, using their Amazon login on thousands of third-party websites.

在2016年，这家电商公司在法国、意大利和西班牙推出了“Pay with Amazon”服务--这种类似PayPal的服务允许用户使用他们的亚马逊账户登录数以千计的第三方网站，为非亚马逊消费付款，包括政府服务、保险和旅游等。

In 2016, payment volume on this service nearly doubled and was used by 33 million customers, Amazon said.

亚马逊表示，2016年该服务的支付金额总数几乎增长一倍，使用该服务的用户达到3300万。