The impact of Square Financial Services, this week's second approved industrial loan company in over 12 years

With all the negativity in the news and markets these days, it was nice to get a breath of fresh air yesterday with the announcement of Square's industrial loan bank charter (ILC) being approved by the FDIC -- a move that effectively will allow Square, through its fully owned subsidiary Square Financial Services, to take deposits and make small business loans from their own balance sheet.

Arguably, the more interesting development about the approval is the precedent it now firmly sets. The last time the FDIC had approved an ILC application was in June 2008, with several high profile ILC applications including Walmart and Home Depot. But with the FDIC deciding to finally break its 12-year thaw on accepting applications (also approving a student loan servicer called Nelnet the same day as Square Financial Services), some are now wondering if this may indicate other fintech and broader big-tech such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google may soon be drafting their own ILC applications to boot.