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I don't think it's because of "afford to repay". One of the American banks has said BTC investments are heavily under water, so people may not be "willing to repay".

LOL I hope the remaining 27% didn't say "What's Open Banking":)

Nice post. 

Your CMA9 list has only 8 names. I think the missing entry is RBS.

With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, the access method used here is quite standard in at least two countries that I know of, namely, USA and India. Suppose I'm on an ecommerce website's checkout page and opt to pay via Bank Transfer. When I click on that option (e-cheque or NetBanking or whatever name), the ecommerce website hands over control to an ePayment Gateway, which ferries me between my bank and ecommerce websites. I enter my bank creds on my Bank's logon screen, see a payment form prefilled with the merchant's name, amount and narration. After I submit the form, the ePG does whatever it does behind the scene and returns me to the ecommerce website, where I see a payment success or failure message.

Coming to think of it, even EBA Clearing's myBank worked in this manner. I wrote https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/5453/why-i-think-eba-clearings-mybank-will-be-a-hit about this product in 2011. I don't hear anything about myBank nowadays, so maybe it's not around anymore.

Personally, I'm not comfortable with entering my banking creds when an ecommerce / ePG is looking over my shoulders. Therefore, I always pay by credit card except where I have no choice but to pay by bank transfer on tax websites that don't accept credit card payments.

In the past, I've commented on the irony of the regulator mandating 2FA for online credit card payments but allowing bank transfers to go through with lighter security despite the fact that a credit card intrinsically enjoys better security via repudiation / chargeback / superior fraud protection as against a bank transfer which is irrevocable and offers zero fraud protection. 

That said, this method of access to bank accounts has been around for over a decade and it has not reportedly caused any identity thefts or suffered from major hacks.

"Then, during commercial breaks in the big game between the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots on 4 February, players will see money falling across their screen." Players as in players of Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots or...?:)

One bank legally accessing customers of its competitors. Whoa! It's a watershed moment, especially for me with my sales and marketing background. Surely something that they don't teach at Harvard Business School.

Don't have figures for UK but, according to this study by Cornerstone Advisors of the US retail banking market, the Goliaths have done a good enough job with digital banking and have stolen a huge march over Davids who haven't done much better and are lagging way behind the Goliaths in customer base.

"The continued spend on bricks-and-mortar stands in direct contrast to the bank's peers, who have been slashing branch numbers". This totally resonates with what I wrote in Why Branch And Digital Channels Will Coexist Forever.

"... churn in branch count driven by digital channels will be specific to individual banks rather than being a secular issue that sweeps the entire banking industry. In other words, some banks will open new branches whereas others will close existing branches."

Like I said, trying to target Millennials is nothing new. Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru said two years ago in Bloomberg: 

“There’s this obsession with millennials. The truth is millennials aren’t spending any money with anybody because they don’t have any.”

Based on personal experience, I've been saying for a long time - like I've done in this post - that (1) traditional banks are fairly good at digital banking (2) fintechs don't offer sensationally better digital banking. Now there's research to support that. 

The Neobank Threat: How Worried Should Banks Be?

When I wrote this post, somebody had privately counseled me to avoid using superlatives like "nothing to fear", instead advising me to hedge with "little to fear". I stuck to my guns because "nothing" was exactly what I felt based on my personal experience.

Now, there's research saying the same thing:

The Neobank Threat: How Worried Should Banks Be?