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On paper, the prospects for Robinhood appear very bright.

On paper because electronic stock trading is one of those areas where tech mediation solves real problems for consumers (e.g. lack of visibility into trade price). After being around for 15+ years, common wisdom would suggest that etrading would've wiped out conventional trading by now. But, it hasn't. I find that telephone orders are still du jour in the consumer trading market. I doubt if high brokerage is the only thing going against etrading since there are many discount brokers - e.g. TD Ameritrade in USA, icicidirect in India - who charge a fraction of the $10 per trade charged by the costlier ones. 

Hope Robinhood has figured out all the other hurdles that stand in the way of driving a more widespread adoption of etrading by the common man.

The case of BC (Banking Correspondents) should be instructive to Sentinel: Set up by a government diktat to accelerate Financial Inclusion in the hinterlands of India having poor footprint of traditional banks, this bank-alternative attracted a lot of people / firms that were drunk on the Kool-Aid of disrupting the purportedly high costs and frustrations of dealing with banks. All BC candidates accepted the 0.5-1% commission offered for putting through direct benefit transfer payments and began operations. A couple of years later, many of them have turned dormant. Their association has now asked the government to raise their commission to 3%. The government is wondering what to do when traditional banks charge only 1-2% fees for debit / credit card payments.

Competing with your customers. Biting the hand that feeds. These are only a couple of aphorisms that come to mind as I predict the eventual deadpooling of services like Nuapay that are more the outcome of aspiration and easy availability of VC money for all wannabe bank disruptors than any well-grounded exposure to operations, risk and other challenges of processing retail payments.

I don't expect Sentinel to share my view but it might want to take the first steps towards evangelizing Nuapay by shedding more light on what it considers as "...delays and frustrations associated with banks".

If only my banks didn't insist on a cumbersome login procedure for balance, last 5 transactions and other pure-inquiry related functionality, I'd be one more customer that prefers mobile banking to online or branch banking. Unfortunately, they do, and I don't.

It maybe after four long years but it's good to see that what I wrote in Why I Think EBA Clearing's myBank Will Be A Hit is finally coming true! 

@MickF:

Agreed. In 2009, TowerGroup published a report titled "Waiting for the (Payments) Hub: A Play in Three Acts". Here's a tragicomic passage from this report:  

"TowerGroup believes life imitates art when it comes to payments hubs. In Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, the main characters, Estragon and Vladimir, wait expectantly, yet unsuccessfully, for a person named Godot to arrive. Although both men claim to know Godot, they admit that they would not recognize him if they saw him. Further, when discussing Godot and what he can do for the men, Vladimir states, "Oh ... nothing very definite." As the play progresses, the men discuss a variety of actions they can take to pass the time until Godot arrives. Unable to decide on a course of action, they ultimately choose to do nothing because "It's safer," so they continue to wait, presumably indefinitely."

This paragraph rang so true in 2009. Six years later, it still rings quite true!

On a another note, is the "101" in the title of your post metaphorical or do you literally plan to come out with 100 more such tips?

Brilliant idea. This is the Holy Grail of targeted offers - right proposition to the right person at the right time on the right medium. But to make it happen by design and more ubiquitously would require IT and Marketing to work together at the product specification stage. That's another - and, arguably, more difficult - Holy Grail to crack:)

As a payments professional involved with global payment hub design and implementation, I agree that integration is a major challenge. However, I haven't come across any brand of payment hub that handles diverse payment methods like FPS, SCT and TARGET2, all in a single hub. Based on my experience, core functionality does still seem to be a major challenge.

Cash is legal tender. Merchants who chose to decline cash are, in effect, spitting in the face of their nation's central bank. That they're given special dispensation by their own government is minor consolation. Anyway, it's early days: The dispensation is yet to become law and let's see how many merchants actually opt to use it. In any case, customers always have the choice to take their cash to other merchants who opt not to use the dispensation.

Great post. I couldn't agree more.

Just this past week, the Government of India launched two bank account linked insurance products, namely, Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana. Both brand names are in Hindi. While Hindi is India's national language, it's only one of 14 widely spoken languages across the 25+ states of the country. I know you're not a native Hindi speaker. Neither am I. But even many native Hindi speakers I know didn't know that the first product was for life insurance and the second one was for accident insurance! 

The policy-makers are perhaps trying to put the spotlight on their political masters by choosing such descriptive names but, unless they overcome this tendency and start using branding that resonates with consumers, many FI schemes like these might languish. Therefore, to your list, I'd add "simplicity in branding" as one more CSF for driving widespread financial inclusion.