Ron Shevlin of Aite Group thinks the potential Goldman Sachs move to online account opening has advantages over traditional banks. This makes sense. While Bruce Cundiff at Javelin notes the lack of experience at Goldman in this space, my thought is that could be an advantage. Banks are constrained by risk, organisation and cultural hurdles, and Goldman may able to avoid those.
Mr. Shevlin said any online start-up would benefit from the Goldman name and could avoid issues such as those faced by Citigroup Inc., which required customers who wanted to earn the higher interest rates of its high-yield online savings accounts to open the accounts online instead of at a branch.
“When a well-established brick-and-mortar bank launches an online bank, they have inherent channel conflicts,” he said
Goldman would likely start with simple deposit products, such as relatively high-yielding certificates of deposit, Mr. Shevlin said.
Bankwatch 
I have a really hard time seeing Goldman moving into retail banking. It doesn’t fit with their culture – it’s a mundane, low return business. I think they are weighing all options now, but will see that the costs of entering retail banking and staying the course are not worth the returns.
fyi… I was not quoted exactly right. I didn’t say that Goldman would “start” w/ simple banking products (ie, HYSA) . I said that I believed that Goldman would ONLY offer simple banking products.
I can’t see Goldman offering checking accts, etc.