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@Alexander Peschkoff:

Before #WC2018, I'd have crudely paraphrased Gary Lineker's famous saying to this context: "Payments is a simple business where interesting players and initiatives happen every year but, in the end, Visa and MasterCard always win". But, seeing as what happened to Germany in the latest world cup, I'll content myself with the hope that waiting for interesting players and initiatives in payments won't be like Waiting for Godot in the eponymous play by Samuel Beckett!

@Nicolas Saubié:

Nice to know that mine is not the only voice in the wilderness on this issue!

Why 5 years - India already implemented fingerprint-bank account-based payment system called Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) two years ago. BUT, it hasn't taken off - despite my aforementioned point about low credit card penetration in India and despite getting massive amounts of free publicity from the government's drive for #CashlessIndia. And, now with the recent Supreme Court diktat banning the use of Aadhaar Biometric ID by banks, fintechs, et al, the fate of AePS suddenly hangs in balance.

You're also probably aware of a fingerprint-bank account based payment system in the US called PayByTouch. It was one of the most high profile casualties of the dot com crash of the late 1990s, since it raised over $100 mn, which was one of the highest VC fund raises in that era.

In short, fingerprint-bank account-based POS payment has been threatening to kill V / MC next year for the last 20 years. Not saying the threat won't succeed in 2019, though:) As I said before, if a new method of payment offers 2X the rewards and charges 0.5X the interchange fees as credit / debit card, it can kill card networks overnight.  

@Alexander Peschkoff:

I preempted mention of the success of Alipay, WeChat & PayTM in my previous comment: "A2A mobile payment methods like Pay By Bank tend to do well in markets with low credit card penetration."

In addition, PayTM makes whopping losses year after year, so its success is driven by the strategy I'd preeemptively suggested for MC in my previous comment: 

"MC uses its deep pockets to grant rewards to PBB users and massively reduce interchange fees for PBB merchants." 

@Alexander Peschkoff: 

Re. compelling value for consumer, we've gone thru' a decade of alternative rails from Retailers (CurrentC), MNOs (ISIS, M-PESA), Fintechs (Boku, Zong). Some of them have shut down and others have "pivoted" to card rails. I don't know a single one that has succeeded globally - at least not without itself becoming costlier than card networks charging 2-4% transaction fees.

Maybe it's still early days but I suspect that MasterCard's latest attempt to disrupt itself via Pay By Bank will also fail to gather steam unless MC uses its deep pockets to grant rewards to PBB users and massively reduce interchange fees for PBB merchants.

A2A mobile payment methods like Pay By Bank tend to do well in markets with low credit card penetration e.g. UPI in India where there are 900 mn debit cards and only 40 mn credit cards. However, and I remember asking this same question when Zapp was launched in 2012, in a market like UK where per capita credit card count is 2 or 3 (I don't remember the exact figure), what is the compelling reason for a payer to switch from credit card to Pay By Bank? With credit card, I get deferred payment, rewards, proof of receipt and superior fraud protection. What benefit do I get with an A2A payment product like Pay By Bank?

"What remains: consumer education." I agree but, going by my experience of lacklustre adoption of contactless cards in India, I'm curious to know if merchant education is also required in Belgium. Most merchants in India don’t know that their POS terminals support the contactless – or “tap” – mode. When customers present a contactless card, cashiers simply dip or swipe it on the POS terminal as though the card is chip or magstripe card as always.

FYI: This just out in ET PRIME:

"Just when India’s fintech ecosystem was becoming a case study for the world, the “system” has come down on it with its full, crushing weight. After the government spent years tom-tomming the benefits of building digital businesses on top of Aadhaar, and fintech firms followed its counsel and invested heavily in Aadhaar-based e-KYC processes, suddenly e-KYC has been outlawed. It has led to a dramatic increase in costs, and a nightmarish return to tedious manual processes. The liquidity drought in the wake of the NBFC crisis is adding more misery. Arti Singh draws a sorry picture of stuttering growth and shuttering businesses, as the industry struggles with the new reality. Read this very important story.
Life after the Aadhaar-KYC ban: Fintech players are crushed under the weight of paperwork, costly funds" (paywall)

Credit Rating Agencies and duopoly / monopoly? I thought AI fintechs were going to use 30,000 parameters including frequency of posting on Instagram to make loan decisions and thereby turn traditional CRAs with their old-fashioned credit score models into dinosaurs?

ICYMI, the Indian Supreme Court recently outlawed the use of Aadhaar by private sector entities, which includes all the fintechs mentioned in your post. Many of them are facing existential crisis because one of the building blocks of India Stack has come crashing down.

Many Indian private sector banks previously used to lend only to borrowers with 750+ CIBIL TransUnion score. You could say this is lending based on traditional credit scoring strategy. There are rumors that some of them are now planning to loosen their purse strings and start lending to borrowers with 500+ credit score, just at higher rate of interest to cover the incremental risk. IMO, this sounds like a great strategy to increase loan volumes.

With such a simple but powerful strategy based on Natural Intelligence, keen to know how Artificial Intelligence based lending strategies are better and worth adopting, especially given the cost of buying and implementing AI lending solutions.