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There is a digital currency called Scotcoin (see previous blog post). I'm not convinced it's one that would suit this purpose though.

I suspect that part of the reason for this is the target market for TSB. It's not and has never been an aspirational brand. It's firmly aimed at older and lower income people, who I would suggest are those who are most in favour of branch use and least interested in mobile and web banking. The message that the fancy new tech bit is easier to use and based on customer feedback is probably precisely what those sorts of customers want to hear, if they even feel they want to use the website at all.

Given that this is now a known issue, I don't get what is so hard about keeping your Oyster card separate from your bank card. If you left your season ticket at home and had to buy a day ticket would that be a system flaw? No, it's a user flaw and so is this. While beforehand, you might have argued that TfL didn't do enough user education on this usability question, you can barely move for public service ads on the subject now so I think the way this story is reported is a bit misleading.

HCE's security depends on how it's implemented. Using tokenisation it isn't inherently insecure. That said, we agree that retailers are going to like it a lot.

Hi Neil and Nick

Thanks for the comments. We only asked one question to keep things simple but those are both really interesting further questions, Neil, for follow ups.

Dave Birch has a good way of explaining Bitcoin to the uninitiated based on a story from Milton Friedman.

http://www.chyp.com/media/blog-entry/explaining-bitcoin-to-the-man-in-the-street-sort-of

Gents, we have a solution. It's now stuck to my gym card so I can now head into M&S after working out to contactlessly buy a large cake, without having to take my handbag with me.

I feel so much safer on the road after watching that...

Security versus usability is the big tension in all systems, not just payments. Maybe one day we'll come up with something that makes payments both more secure and more usable. I'd like to say biometrics but given that I have a biometric log in on my pc and it only lets me in about 2% of the time (the rest of the time I fall back to a password) I'm yet to be convinced.

Personally I suspect the 260 character limit suggests nothing of the sort. Rather - a refusal to consider any substantive criticism. Reminds me of a certain political party inviting comment on their website of their planned welfare reforms. It was only after I'd written about 800 words of reasoned, cogent, referenced, detailed, foaming outrage that I noticed the 300 character limit.