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FDIC is spot on - just that the "need for traditional branch offices" may be felt more by bankers than their customers:

Secret Of Survival Of Bank Branches

I seem to have august company now! Branches hold strong in face of digital onslaught - FDIC. Most tellingly, as the FDIC has observed, "... there is little evidence that the emergence of new electronic channels for delivering banking services has substantially diminished the need for traditional branch offices where banking relationships are built." Just that I tend to believe that the "need for traditional branch offices" is felt more by bankers than by their customers. 

I know many (e.g. eZetap, Powa) that only provide a mobile card reader and leave it to the merchant to use their existing acquirer accounts. 

@AlexP: Any idea how many of the iZettle-clones included a merchant acquirer account à la SQUARE? I don't even know if iZettle itself does. None of the half-dozen clones in India do. I still believe that obviating the need for the merchant to get an acquirer account on their own is the real secret sauce behind SQUARE's success.

@Anon: Interesting option. Can you please throw some light on the mechanics of how you authorize the transfer of your location info from FB ID to issuer? 

@HariS: TY for your clarification. (1) Regardless of what Apple knows about you, Apple Pay doesn't reveal the identity of the user to merchant, therefore a merchant can't send instore coupons. That was known from Day One, even to a non-FanBoy Android lover like me! (2) From its very launch, Apple has emphasized security and privacy of Apple Pay, so I tend to think that people who may otherwise not care about these things would have given a lot of weightage to these perceived differentiators in this specific instance when they decided to adopt Apple Pay. Whether they understand implementation intricasies or not, they're smart enough to smell a rat if they ever receive an instore targeted offer from a merchant via Apple Pay! (3) In any case, Apple has left it to merchants to implement instore coupons in their own apps, powered by iBeacon - totally outside the core Apple Pay offering.

From being one of those people who believed that Agile is "same as adhoc, unsystematic...", I've come around to the belief that the methodology resonates well in contexts where I also hear phrases like "MVP", "fail fast", etc. Not sure, though, how relevant those phrases are in a tightly regulated industry like banking where the stakes are much higher than a few freemium users getting ticked off with bugs.

Great feature. But hope issuer banks allow customers to enter an alternative mobile # while setting it up for overseas trips. Otherwise, this feature won't solve the problem for many people who tend to use alternative SIMs / handsets while traveling abroad to escape high international roaming costs / CDMA-GSM network incompatibilities.

As long as a MoMMA or P2FM or any other third party service (TPS) is accessing a bank account, the customer has to hand over their credentials to them, regardless of whether the access happens via any (imaginary) API or screen scraping or whatever technology. Since there’s no incentive for any bank to trust that a TPS would use such access only for downloading account activity, the liability for potential fraud as a result of handing over the credentials to a TPS would always fall on the customer. And since a 360 degree of a customer's financial activity straddles multiple entities - bank(s), TELCO(s), Utility, etc. - a customer would be taking this fraud risk many times over. How likely are they to do it for getting frivolous money management tips?

The future belongs to apps that are purpose-built, seek access to just one or two accounts and provide significant advice in return e.g. BillGuard (card fraud alert), BillShrink (alternative plans from TELCOs and Utilities). (Post its acquisition by MasterCard, BillShrink no longer offers this service). These MoMMAs offering $2.99 coffee saving tips have no chance.

While the UK government's initiative API initiative is a step in the right direction, I wonder how much it would help in money management since, as I've mentioned above, a 360 degree view of a person's financial health straddles nonbanking entities that are (presumably) outside the purview of this new regulation.

The NetBanking and Mobile Banking apps of all my banks support transaction functionality. Despite that, if I mostly use them “not to perform transactions...", it’s because I merely want them to "doublecheck financial health or get a statement". Sometimes I wonder if we're exaggerating the need for external "help with finance": According to me, "Earn more and live within your means" is good enough money management advice!

As a marketer who is working on solutions to deliver targeted offers and coupons on mobile devices, I'm thrilled to read that there are consumers out there who value these things. That said, while launching Apple Pay, Apple categorically said that "when the payment is made with Apple Pay, the cashier won't know the consumer's name or card number." Therefore, it was obvious that Apple Pay wouldn't facilitate coupons etc. While that might’ve impacted merchant adoption, I’m sure that it has actually bolstered consumer adoption of Apple Pay: For every consumer who considers lack of coupon a shortcoming, there must be at least one other consumer who considers that as a virtue and a fulfillment of Apple’s promise not to share any transaction data with the merchant (or itself, for that matter).

Apple has the clout to make standards of its own but, by excluding P2P from Apple Pay, it has chosen to endorse the prevailing best practice of designing mobile apps as lightweight apps without tacking on too many features on to a single app. Maybe a separate P2P app is on the cards. Maybe Apple thinks P2P to be too small a market to bother with. Only time will tell.