Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is taking a page from Apple Inc.'s playbook. For the first time, it is allowing rivals to sell their own investment products through a Goldman web application, according to several clients and the bank.

With the move, Goldman aims to do more than sell just its own products. It is looking to create an online platform used by others—even competitors—to reach customers.

Just as iPhone users can choose Google Maps or Spotify's music-streaming service instead of Apple's own applications, retail brokers across the country can choose a Wells Fargo & Co. debt instrument for their clients' portfolio, using the Goldman web tool.

It is a fresh example of investment banks seeking new ways to make money as superlow interest rates and tougher regulation crimp profits. In some cases, banks like Goldman are transitioning from swashbuckling traders to toll-taking middlemen, taking less risk to earn smaller fees.

For Goldman, there is urgency behind the shift: Its debt-trading desks earned $5.6 billion through September. That is the smallest haul at this point in the year since 2003 and a fraction of the roughly $20 billion the debt-trading desks generated in that period of 2009.

"The Goldman Sachs business model is being disrupted by regulatory changes," said Guy Moszkowski, an analyst at Autonomous Research. "They need to replace lost revenue with other things." For more on this see the full Wall Street Journal report here.

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