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@DavidGodfrey: Sorry but I'm confused: In your previous comment, you imply that you went thru' very poor security; in your latest comment, you imply that you went thru' superstrong biometric security. 

@FinextraMember / @DineshKatyal:

ChasePay is a mobile payment offering from a bank and it supports instore payments in USA. 

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161019005338/en/Wakefern-Accept-Chase-Pay

Going by the technology used by my bank in India to support instore mobile payments on its mobile payment app PayZapp, I'd hazard a guess that ChasePay works on QR code.

@DineshKatyal:

TY for your reply. It has equally well been my experience that, since I wrote that post 3 years ago, a number of retailers have replaced plastic loyalty cards with mobile phone #, so the value proposition of the "loyalty card replacement" use case I'd envisaged for mobile wallets in the post has diminished in the meanwhile.

To summarize, mobile wallets are not solving a significant problem - either for payment cards or loyalty cards.

Turning to fitness trackers and smartwatches, they surely blend better than plastic or smartphone form factors for many payment contexts. In theory, they should progressively replace plastic. However, in actual practice, I'm not so sure: In the late 1990s, Singapore implemented a road toll system based on the so-called ERP card. Affixed to the windscreen of a car, ERP let motorists drive at normal speeds past toll booths, with the said toll charge being automatically deducted from the card. By obviating the need to stop and queue up at toll booths, ERP solved a huge problem and truly blended in with the payment context. However, 20 years later, such a payment form factor hasn't become ubiquituous worldwide. Therefore, I'm not so sure of alternative form factors making a big dent into plastic anytime in the forseeable future.

@DavidGodfrey: Your question contains the answer: PayPal. It's not secure. In all probability, if you dispute the payment, your bank will deflect you to PayPal.

"Customer will forget password. Customer will forget hardware token. We must waive our normal security procedures so that they're still permitted to transfer funds. And, hey, if they claim later that it was a fraudulent transfer, we need to refund their money". 

I'd imagine that such a software spec would be right up the alley of a neobank funded by VC money and under no obligation to make revenues or profits.

I totally agree that it won't be any different / better with any traditional bank - in UK or anywhere else in the world.

"It is only a matter of time" will go down as the most oft-used line about mobile payments. I think I first heard it 7 years ago and have been hearing it repeatedly year after year. 3 years ago, I said 

Mobile Wallets: Fix What's Broken - And It Ain't Payments

Good to see it's still the case, as reiterated by Michael Abbott: "The existing payments system isn’t broken, which is why consumers are not making a mass-move to mobile phone payments adoption".

I predict that mobile payments will be replaced by something else well before they succeed in replacing plastic.

"The number of North Americans using their mobile phones for payments at the point of sale has remained flat over the last year".

https://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=29619

Doesn't exactly sound like hockey stick growth for mobile payments, does it?

Okay. Since you mentioned regulator going after originator of payment and gave Alcon Labs example "For a case in point", I thought Alcon was caught for originating payment to banned parties. With that out of the way, AFAIK, Iran and Sudan are both on US export watch list. Do you really think Alcon Labs would need specific customer and vendor databases to know it was illegal to sell to *anyone* in those two countries?

Even if banks were to become invisible, I agree with @FinextraMember that they will not disappear. However, going by trends in other aggregator-driven industries, I tend to believe that banks will NOT become invisible. In fact, they might even become MORE visible.

Take cab aggregators for example. I really don't need to know the name of the cabbie and all the other info that I get when I make a booking on Uber. But, still, Uber provides all that visibility. Why? Because Uber does not want to take responsibility for what happens after it connects me with a cab.

Take Amazon for another example. As long as it's Fulfilled by Amazon, I really don't need to name the name and address of the Seller but Amazon gives me all that info. Why? Again, for the same reason as Uber - to limit its own liability.

Same way, a Siri or a Cortana won't take responsibility if my EFT payment falls into the cyberabyss and the only way it can wash its hands off is by providing me with full visibility about the bank that it has chosen to execute my EFT.

The desire to provide visibility raises manifold in a regulated industry like banking - a Siri or Cortana won't want to be subject to the regs that apply to banks.

@IanHillier-Brook + 1. I especially like the one about "general attitude to work" er... "hard work" LOL.