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John,

I agree.

Banks bring in a mega class trust contribution also into this business. The Economy of Trust created by a combination of (i) anti-money- laundering legislation banks in particular have to live up to anyway, (ii) strong e-id tools, (iii) strong procedures when these tools are attached to citizens in private and enterprise roles, (iv) strong privacy requirements, (v) strong security, (vi) e-id as a services, (vii) PKI-usage in payment network etc etc

This all serves to make it clear that it certainly is in the interest of society at large that banks do join in more widely than presently and that all bankers should realise that it is not only a question of increasing revenue by creating new customer value - but also to take responsibility for more competitive national and single market economies.

But then it is important to proceed with work on a network that all service providers can join - subject to living up to sufficient trust when identifying customers and storing necessary material and logs. Banks have the unfortunate role of always be blamed - collectively - when a couple of them fail and in this network it would again be a piece of cake for media to put the blame on banks when a weak link fails - be it a bank or a non-bank service provider.

All in favour:

http://www.causes.com/causes/60512

That fact is a good reason to move more towards longer term and more-in-line with other industries incentives. 

But it is even more important to take the innovation leap on offer soonest.

What is the real damage?

Media so wish it would be true..

internet banking will increasingly happen in mobile devices as devices become more of computers - even if the e-banking-on-PC-habit prison in the developed world is difficult to escape from.

One day the mobile devices will replace plastic cards of all sorts and that is naturally an important part of banks' customer service. Even before that my prediction is that notifications to the omnipresent mobile (for e-invoices, balances, transactions etc) will be major development.

In the old days - especially in the 80s before Internet - e-banking was seen as a supplementary channel - in addition to branches and contact centres. Today it is the main channel for almost all services - both for the customer in his private role and in employee roles of so called corporate customers. All banks have not yet adjusted their strategies accordingly...

more in my blogpost some time ago

Cheques were abolished in practise here in Finland in 1983 - by introducing the equivalent of 8 cents fee per form.

It is time to move forward all over the place from this slow and expensive method of payment.

Report will be made public early next week. Key element for making unification and simplification an is fast adoption of VAT directive. Will revert later.

How big is it in your country? 54 bn in Germany (b2b only?), Finland 2,8bn (b2b only)....