Without much fanfare and quietly, Google has become one of the most active early stage investors in fintech.

Google's Interest In Fintech

Google's interest in fintech has included multiple investments in collaborative finance platforms, making the search firm one of the most active investors in crowdfunding. But the firm's interests span beyond the excitement of social investing — it's also interested in putting its chips down on more core fintech bets, including trading, digital currency, ecommerce, and back office settlements.

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In fact, over the past 5 years, Google Ventures has been the most active fintech investor anywhere.

Moving Deeper Into The Finance Industry

Yesterday,  an industrial-grade communication tool developed and owned by a financial industry consortium,Symphony, announced that it had raised a new investment round totaling over $100 million.

Filling out the list of 21 finance and venture firms participating in the round was Google Finance.

Symphony's Wall Street backers are seeking to challenge communications and data firms including Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP and Thomson Reuters Corp.Bloomberg News

Even Bloomberg News was cognizant of the fact that Symphony is competing head-head with the same messaging tools used on the Bloomberg terminal.

This investment adds to a warchest of another $66 million Symphony has raised previously. Roth Porat, CFO of Google's parent company, Alphabet, was an early backer of Symphony in her role as CFO at Morgan Stanley. Re/Code had an early scoop last week that Google was in talks to back the communications technology company.