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@AnirudhRaghavendra:

According to this MINT article about digital payment transaction values in India, batch mode NEFT is the clear winner.

Batch A2A NEFT: 12,50,000 Crores INR

Realtime A2A IMPS: 65,100 Crores INR

Batch:Realtime = 1250000/65100 = 19.2:1 ~ 20X

Like in UK, batch payment volumes far exceed realtime payment volumes even in India.

This resonates strongly with my aforementioned belief that realtime payments is a hygiene factor.

I get what's the whole point of a great consent model but my question is, how relevant is it to MINT - when it has already got what would seem the mother of all consent from those millions of customers who have willingly handed over their online banking creds to MINT.

PFMs like MINT have had the online banking credentials of millions of people. Since they've been having this info for nearly a decade without any charges of hacking, I presume they have the requisite consent from those people to access their banking information.

Do they need to get any more consent from those people in the context of Open Banking?

I've long held that Mobile RDC is the #1 killer app of mobile banking. It now appears that cardless ATM is becoming another killer app. I don't belong to the "cash / cheque is dying" brigade. But, even to me, it seems odd that cash and cheque processing apps are proving so popular. 

Whither mobile wallets and other forms of digital payments that were supposed to kill cash and cheques?

Earlier today, I came across a very interesting article on why neobanks have been largely a flop show. It makes a similar point about mobile-only/first. 

http://edgardunn.com/2017/11/new-banking-being-digital-being-different/

I use Android but need to keep abreast of iOS for professional reasons. From what I know, there's no space in iPhone X's bezel-less design to accommodate a fingerprint reader on the front. Ergo Face ID - not because TouchID is broken. Similar to why X lacks a home button - not because the home button is broken:). Of course that logic leaves the question unanswered as to why X didn't place a fingerprint reader at the back of the handset a la Samsung S8 and a few other bezel-less phones.

Nice post. AmEx may not be able to help with this but there's another important imperative for fintech startups: Develop products that consumers really want instead of yet another checking account or debit card or PFM or...:)

@AnirudhRaghavendra: 

Cheque imaging is required because cheques are still around.

And why are cheques still around?

Part of the answer lies in your question. 

1. Next to cash, cheque is the most frictionless method of payment.
2. If customers really want frictionless and realtime payments, cash can't be beaten. As DB Research noted, cash is the only form of realtime payment that accomplishes transfer of value between payor and payee without any dependency on bank, hardware, software, network, battery, and other third parties.
3. Personally, I need to make a payment on 7th of every month and another payment on 10th of every month. There's no way I can guarantee availability of server, Internet or me on those days for making a realtime payment via RTGS/IMPS. So, I schedule them in advance via NEFT. Do I care for realtime payments? No.
4. During the implementation of FPS for a Top 5 UK Bank, we predicted that FPS would kill BACS within 2-3 years of launch of FPS in 2008. Nothing like that happened. Instead, UK customers didn't care too much for realtime payments; BACS volumes grew steadily and reached a peak a couple of years ago.

I see a growing belief that realtime payments is merely a hygiene factor.

When somebody says "I'll write a cheque", it doesn't mean only "write by hand". It's a metaphor for filling the cheque, whether in wet ink or via printer.

With that out of the way, a payer that prints a cheque needs only to know the payee's name. Not having to collect, store and process the payee's account number, sort code, etc. is the major advantage of cheque. What QR code can it print with just the payee's name? With whatever QR code that it can print with just the payee's name, how will the payee be able to use a smartphone QR code scanner to deposit that cheque into their bank account? 

Banks issue blank cheques to business customers who write the amount and beneficiary name on individual cheques later. Who will print the QR code that's beneficiary-specific?