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Earn more. Spend less. That's all there is to prudent financial management. If people can't practise that simple maxim, I tend to believe no amount of technology will help them get better at financial management.

Techniques like the ones proposed in this post have been attempted in the past - as I highlighted in Credit Cards Come A Full Circle - but they haven't worked. And for a good reason: Few people under the influence will notice the the PUSH notification “Hey go easy tonight there is vacation coming up, you might better save for that!” and fewer still will act on it when they're in a social setting and there's a risk of being branded a cheapskate.

Financial Services has been the most profitable sector in FORTUNE 500 for the past three consecutive years, if not longer. In the latest GLOBAL 500, 7 out of 10 most profitable companies in the world belong to Financial Services (https://twitter.com/s_ketharaman/status/766205700225785857). 

Loyalty, emotional bonding, personalization and all those nice things must lead to bottomline results, which they clearly haven't done for airlines as evidenced by the fact that there isn't a single airline company in the list of (at least) the Top 25 most profitable companies.

IMO, there's a much stronger case for Airlines to learn from Financial Services. (Not that FinServ is waiting to teach, but that's a another story).

Yo @AlexanderPeschkoff: Long time, good to see you again! I thought Apple Pay had totally licked mobile payments UX. Your comments are making me curiouser and curiouser about MultiPass!

@MattScott: "Don't leave home without powerbank." AmEx may not like USB Battery Pack usurping its credit card but, even without Apple Pay - I'm an Android fan - that's the reality in today's smartphone-dependent world. 

"Apple Pay. However, the process of opening the app..." Maybe it's different on TfL but, in general, Apple Pay comes on automatically, which is one of its strong differentiators compared to other mobile payments, as I'd highlighted in Apple Puts Banks Squarely At The Center Of Mobile Payments.

Nice post. Since one normally asks a question, did you really mean for the title to be "The Million Dollar Question You Needn't Be Uber To Ask"?

After having tried PayPal and banks for several years, I sometimes tend to believe that paper cheque is the most effective instrument for cross-border business fund transfers! Kudos to TransferWise for launching this much-awaited product. If it doesn't arbitrarily freeze merchant accounts and suck at customer service, I see a bright future for this product - even if it charges nearly as much fees as PayPal or banks.

@NickCollin:

I too learned the term "take rate" very recently, but it has been around for a while, judging from this BI article titled "As PayPal's Business Expands, Its Take Rate Is Collapsing" published in Jan. 2015. As stated in this article, take rate is the revenue the company generates as a percentage of total payment volume.

AFAIK, and as per another BI article (http://www.businessinsider.com/interchange-fees-the-billion-dollar-fight-for-control-of-your-wallet-2011-3?IR=T), card networks like MC earn an ad valorem fee on every transaction and it is a part of interchange. The fixed fee transaction fee you're referring to is probably in addition to this.

If otherwise smart people don't even get the basic value proposition of mobile payments right after 10 years, you got to redefine smartness or question how smart they are. 

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

@DavidGodrey:

TY for the clarification. 

If VL is only the supplier of the FPS and BACS technologies,

1. the line "the company processed over 11 billion transactions with a value of £6 trillion, generating revenues of £182 million" in the previous post is somewhat misleading, and
2. the term "take rate" is itself meaningless in the context of VL or, at least, not comparable with the much higher take rate of MC, which actually owns a card scheme, not just the underlying technology. 

Thanks again, far more than a clarification, this has been a revelation!

@DavidGodrey:

My comments here, and on the previous post titled MasterCard agrees £700m VocaLink acquisition are based on the following passage in the previous post: 

"The London-based group operates BACS, the ACH enabling direct credit and direct debit payments between bank accounts, as well as the Faster Payments scheme".

If the ownership of BACS and FPS is as you describe, then the above passage is an exaggerated account of VL's role in BACS and FPS and I'd agree that MC can't shut down VL's offerings.