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The growth since PayM's first anniversary - volumes of GBP 70M now versus 44M then - is impressive. However, in absolute terms, this is a drop in the retail payments ocean and reinforces my earlier observation that P2P is a very low volume type of retail payments. 

Paym celebrates first anniversary

MCX joins MNO carrier billing and attempts by a few others to challenge credit card interchange fees and then failing miserably to come up with an alternative that costs less and is available within realistic timeframes. End of the day, for all their cribs about high interchange costs, merchants know that it makes more business sense to get some business by incurring the applicable MSC / MDF cost rather than losing business by refusing credit cards and their applicable processing costs.

Personally, video banking is a technology whose time has gone. It's too costly and not effective enough compared to humans, especially in low labor cost markets and for high revenue impact use cases like sales. In the early days of the technology, providers used to claim "cost reduction" as its benefit. As you can see from my comments at Secret Of Survival Of Bank Branches, this was a myth. Interestingly, the latest ad campaign for video conferencing by a leading MNO in India doesn't even broach the subject of cost, instead tapping another benefit that's totally absent in branch banking. 

From what I understand, the excitement about DCL is driven by its technical ability to support a transaction log without a central authority, followed by the expectation that some disruptive DCL startup will find a way to sidestep the legal need for a central authority in land registry, motor vehicle registration and other use cases that are currently controlled by a central authority. AirBnB and Uber have proved that it's possible to amass huge valuation by dispensing with permits in industries that have hitherto required permits from central authorities.

Not surprising. US merchants have stalled for 10 years over not adopting 3DS / 2FA for online payments. I didn't expect them to fall head over heels to adopt Chip + Signature / PIN for offline payments from Day One. Perhaps more than merchants in any other country, US merchants know that Mitigating Fraud Does Not Pay The Bills.

When I used to work for a fintech company, we were told to follow the lead of our banking customers located across the Thames backwaters in Canary Wharf and adopt a more formal dress code! Funny how BarclayCard seems to be doing exactly the opposite!!

This post reminds me of the question I'd asked in Are Banks Losing Customers Or Shedding Customers? After reading the first few paragraphs of your post, it's quite evident that traditional lenders are NOT aiming to target the SMB segment at all, so I'm not sure if they'd find any business case for migration, automation, etc.

Yet another wannabe-disruptor neobank biting the dust. 

@JonRutter:

TY for your response. In general, I agree that mobile wallet is a problem looking for a solution and have said exactly that in Mobile Wallets: Fix What's Broken - And It Ain't Payments. Which is why, in my comment, mobile wallet was prefixed with the qualification "compelling". I was referring specifically to PayZapp, a mobile wallet from a bank. For reasons highlighted in HDFC Bank's PayZapp Ends My Bill Payment Woes, it's truly innovative and provides compelling value unmatched by any mobile wallet I've tried from neobanks or TELCOs.

While banks won't be the first out of the gate with any new offering, their past track record makes me believe that, even in the future they'll come up with the real innovations that not only solve real problems but drive revenues and profits, which I consider the recipe for the best form of innovation.

Apple took its time to get iPod, iPhone and Apple Pay right and was rewarded with sustained leadership in each product category. So was Google with web search and Facebook with social networking. So why won't banks get the time? Historically, this whole early mover advantage business has been proven to be a bit overrated.

Good post. From personal experience, I can easily agree with #4. Let me add the rise of "open" angel investment platforms like AngelList (USA, India, ...) and LetsVenture (India) to your list of drivers of growing private investments. Earlier "closed" platforms like Indian Angel Network had the feel of elitist cabals. The new breed of open platforms has thrown open the private investment space to the "common man".