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"Will startups pay for providing marketing advisory / consulting guidance?" Yes. And many do.

"And if yes, maybe that is a startup idea in itself?" It has gone beyond the idea stage. There are examples galore of companies providing marketing advisory / consulting guidance for startups for several years. Should Finextra Community Guidelines permit, I can name many such companies.

I love the way Stripe writes off 3DS: "at Stripe we've so far opted not to support 3D Secure since we believe the costs outweigh the benefits." More at https://support.stripe.com/questions/does-stripe-support-3d-secure-verified-by-visa-mastercard-securecode.

"reduce fraud losses by $$$ billions". Whoa! I'm struggling to understand how that's possible when total card payment volumes are of the order of magnitude of $$$$ B and fraud levels are $ B only. Disruptors have been planning alternatives to high MSC / MDF for years but there isn't even one that I can think of that has come up with a viable solution that costs less for merchants. 

Chip+PIN is a solution seeking a problem for USA (although it's a solution solving a real problem in ROW).

Mitigating Fraud Does Not Pay The Bills

Lost Internet connection while posting my previous comment. Reposting it in full: 

I agree that the reputation of the banking industry has taken a beating but despite that - or maybe because of that!!! – it is very profitable.  

• Financial services was the most profitable sector in FORTUNE GLOBAL 500 in 2013: http://ow.ly/d/3qCc

• Finserv continues to be a very profitable sector. 6 out of 10 most profitable FORTUNE GLOBAL 500 corporations in 2015 are banks. https://twitter.com/GTM360/status/642284454409584641

Many wannabe bank disruptor neobanks will die overnight if their VC funding dries up – or even if banks cut off their access to banking rails.

Banking industry reputation has certainly taken a bruising in recent years. I don't know about management being blindsided. But facts don't support the contention that profits have been slashed:

Financial services is the most profitable sector in FORTUNE GLOBAL 500 in 2013: http://ow.ly/d/3qCc

Finserv is still very profitable. 6 out of 10 most profitable Fortune Global 500 corporations are banks. https://twitter.com/GTM360/status/642284454409584641

What a change 3-4 years can make! Recently one of my banks introduced a service whereby customers could call a telephone # and their RM would call them back. On probing further about why a customer shouldn't simply call their RM's telephone #, the bank admitted that they were downsizing their RM organization. In the absence of a dedicated RM, anyone in the centralized pool of RMs that was free at that point would take the call. When I tried this service, the lady who called me back had no idea who I was despite the fact that I'd called from my "registered mobile #". Overall, it felt like dealing with a call center. This suggests that banks might need technology of a different nature - CTI? - for their RMs!

Sanctions screening is also challenged by linguistic nuances and calls for Taking Multilingual Support to the Next Level, as I'd highlighted in this article on TEC (http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/article/Taking-Multilingual-Support-to-the-Next-Level.html).

Comprehensive post, based, as you say, on your tenure as RM. And I'm curious to know when that was. Because, going by my recent interactions with them, banks project RM as the go-to person but are putting more thrust on making their customers do more via digital banking especially mobile banking. RM seems to be a dying breed and technology for RMs is somewhat moot. 

I was once involved in formulating a strategy to deliver a robust contingency service in the event of failure of an FPS system that was rated for 1200 transactions / second. At the time (2008), the contingency service cost nearly as much as the basic system, which dissonated with the business sponsor's expectation that contingency shouldn't exceed 5% of project cost. With the passage of time, I'm sure there have been major improvements in technology and / or process and am keen on knowing whether contingency costs have come down to a more realistic level now.