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Firing seems to be a very light penalty for a crime of this magnitude.

@BrindaN:

Not sure if your comment is specific to any one geography because I know many banks in India and UK, among other countries, that have been using social media intelligence in sales, marketing, product development and customer service for over 3 years. More at https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=6912 and https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=8609

@CharmaineO:

Mass transit, parking - these are examples of near-monopolies that can drive behavior change with little or no risk of losing customers. I don't see too many free-market enterprises having the luxury to dictate the mode of payment of an entire population. Even TfL introduced OysterCard over a decade ago and promoted it with discounted fares for a long time but it’s only recently that it has been able to go totally cashless. If that's the condition with a virtual monopoly, how many private sector companies can survive until so many factors to come together for alternative payments to go mainstream? To paraphrase the famous saying by John Maynard Keynes, the market can be stuck in cash / plastic for longer than alternative payment providers can remain solvent. 

I've seen people paying by cash and plastic at the self-checkout aisles at ASDA / WalMart. Unless ASDA has started declining those modes of payments lately, I'm not sure whether self-checkout can drive greater adoption of alternative payments.

I remember using contactless cards at a couple of stores - PRET and Krispy Kreme, if I'm not mistaken - in Canary Wharf back in 2007. The CX was great. 8 years later, they still don't seem to have entered the mainstream. When it comes to alternative payments, looks like change doesn't happen even in 10 years, contrary to Bill Gates's famous quote. 

Hope BoE has firehose access to Twitter so that its inputs are free of selection bias. 

@Anon & @TomH: TY. I now understand how authentication of "request to pay" works! 

@TomH: TY but isn't there a crucial difference or two between these two scenarios considering that the payor is the consumer, not Zapp or Card Issuer? (1) In a card transaction, the consumer / payor is already at the authenticated merchant's POS, so s/he doesn't need any more authentication of the merchant (2) In a PULL transaction, the consumer can't "see" the merchant, so how will s/he know that the request to pull money is coming from the right merchant?

I used to face this problem in the UK even in a PUSH transaction where I could select the payee from a list. Like I wrote in a blog post at the time, 

"In the case of my utility bill, ... when I went there (NetBanking portal), I had to select the beneficiary name from a drop down list. ... problem was none of the available names in the drop down list matched my utility company’s name (“EDF ENERGY”)! What options did I find in the drop down list? There was EDF ENERGY ELEC and EDF ENERG LONDON. Well, I was living in LONDON and was trying to pay my ELECTRICTY bill, so do I select EDF ENERGY ELEC or EDF ENERG LONDON?"

The hidden CICO cost has become an even bigger barrier towards card acceptance since I wrote this post. Almost all cab companies have stopped accepting cards by now. Many of them have launched prepaid mobile wallets. While the companies are promoting mobile wallets heavily, their drivers are even more vehemently protesting their use by passengers. Apparently it now takes 15 days for cabbies to "cash out" payments made by mobile wallets.

CICO cost is a major barrier for card acceptance, as I'd highlighted in https://www.finextra.com/blogs/Fullblog.aspx?blogid=9651. Since I wrote this post, almost all cab companies have stopped accepting cards inside the cab. Many of them have launched prepaid mobile wallets. While the companies are promoting mobile wallets heavily, drivers are even more vehemently resisting their use by passengers. With card payments, drivers used to realize their payments in 3 days as I'd mentioned in my blog post. However, with mobile wallet payments, the delay has apparently increased to 15 days. Cash flow is arguably a bigger issue than MSC towards more widespread card acceptance.

@TomH: While I agree, I'm curious to know how the payor will authenticate the "request to pay" as coming from the genuine payee?