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All bubbles burst in the steady state. They end badly but only for the people who're caught holding the parcel when the music stops. In the run up to the burst, many times more number of people make lots of money as the bubble grows in the transient state that lasts several years. Not surprisingly, burst of past bubbles has never stopped future bubbles from forming. The list at the end of your post is adequate testimony.

I read the figures slightly differently: 27% have "switched"; a *further* 26% are "considering a switch"; ergo, "not considering switch" = 100-27-26 = 47% only. IOW, "a majority will switch, if not already switched".

Challenger Banks are VC-funded companies. Anecdotally, at this (nascent) stage of their evolution, customer acquisition is all that matters. Even if most of the customers are only tirekickers, it doesn't matter for its valuation and next round of funding. It's only if / when the valuation froth fizzles out and funding becomes scarce that normal business metrics like revenue and profit will start mattering. That's when we'll really know whether traditional banks start behaving like challenger banks or challenger banks start behaving like traditional banks.

"Customers are on the precipice of embracing future technology and new products,..".

Precipice? I hope they don't fall into a deep abyss from the precipice:)

Not so long ago, many finsurgents used to claim that the payments business of banks will be disrupted by this very same MCX!

Offering a better product and better service to people whom banks don't want to serve would be disrupting whom? Not banks surely.

EARNY is a great example of a niche-PFM that supports the killer feature: Recommend-and-Execute.

Credit card redemption startup Earny raises $9 million

After reading about Earny, I thought of one more item on the PFM wishlist:

"Never let my rewards lapse". PFM alerts customer to reward points about to lapse, offers to place the redemption order and follow up with the bank to ensure that the gift is delivered. 

As I highlighted in Bank Insources Credit Card Reward Redemption Theft, the redemption process is full of friction and PFM can help ensure that customer doesn't lose out on their rewards. 

@AnonFinextraMember:

I know MDR is what Merchant suffers but I also mentioned a figure of 0.5%. The actual figure is only 0.2% (Source:https://www.adyen.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-eu-interchange-cap). So, I'm sure the MDR suffered by Monzo is much lower than my 0.5% estimate, even if Monzo allowed top up via credit card.

Anyway, that hair splitting is irrelevant in the current context of comparison with PayTM whose cost is much higher viz. 2-3% MDR. You may have heard that PayTM is on its way to become the world's largest digital bank.

UK account switching just empowers people to switch accounts. It doesn't spell out the benefit of doing so. It does not carry out the switch for them. People evaluate the switch at high level and conclude that all banks are the same. At the high level, they're right. So the benefit of switching is negligible. The effort involved in making the switch is not negligible. Ergo cost exceeds benefit and UK account switching has met with lukewarm reception.

OTOH, PFM goes a little deeper and makes a recommendation to switch only if the benefit of switching is significant for the given consumer. By executing the switch automatically, PFM eliminates the cost of switching. Ergo benefit exceeds cost and switch is more likely to happen.

As things stand, benefit of switching could be significant for credit card, mortgage and other banking products. Admittedly, they're negligible for a basic checking account. But that's only if you restrict the field to the legacy banks. If you thrown in the challenger banks, the situation may change, especially if the ones in UK / Europe take some tips from their counterparts in India on how to become more aggressive by negotiating better funding and valuation terms with VCs.

I don't know about boo.com but, from what I've observed, virtually every unicorn / decacorn has reached where it has by following the same playbook. 

@AnonFinextraMember:

No, you're not missing anything here. According to the prevailing playbook of unicorns / decacorns - at least in USA and India, to name two markets - investor does pick up the VC-funded company's operating costs and the company does make whopping losses e.g. PayTM, Uber, WeWork, et al. The investor becomes the business, which is highly sustainable when measured by standard parameters of a business. The company becomes an asset class measured by different parameters on which it is highly sustainable. More in my blog posts titled When A Business Is VC Funded, VC Is The Business and If You Think VCs Create Bubbles, Meet ICOs (hyperlinks removed to comply with Finextra Community Rules but these posts should appear on top of Google Search results when searched by their titles).