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@Finextra: 2013? Or 2023? "According to a report from RBS and Capgemini, non-cash payments volumes are expected to increase by nearly 10% percent to reach 366 billion transactions in 2013, fuelled by strong growth in developing markets and mobile money."

Great article. I used to think Hadoop was a powerful software but, from some of the use cases it's used for, I began to have doubts. So much so that I was tempted to write an article that took a dig at Hadoop by asking "What Is The Difference Between Hadoop And Excel?" and answering "Hadoop Thinks It's Excel But Excel Doesn't Think It's Hadoop!". I'll forthwith ditch that article!

That said, any idea what does a news item like "Hadoop Raises $MM Funding" mean? If there isn't a single entity called Hadoop, where does all that money go? 

Not surprising but suicidal, as time will tell. There's no way MCX can achieve mainstream adoption of CurrentC at a total cost that is below their post Frank-Dodd-Durban debit / credit interchange fees of 12 cents / ~3%.

http://snarketing2dot0.com/2014/09/03/failed-currentc/

This resonates my long-stated belief that the likes of Apple, Facebook and Google won't bother to venture into banking anytime soon. In any case, even when Aldermore and Virgin Money do enter the fray in the future, they'd be doing so as licensed banks, so they won't qualify for the investment purportedly pouring into non-bank alternatives.

Having been involved in one of the first FPS programs in UK, I've a lifetime's worth of FPS / RTP Kool-Aid to drink but facts are facts:

1. USA already has an RTP for domestic payments. It's called FedWire
2. USA has the world's largest GDP
3. Not sure if politics had nothing to do with the failure of the last attempt at creating an FPS-equivalent in USA 2 years ago. From what I recall, the decision to scupper the proposal was taken by banks.
4. Left to banks, RTP wouldn't have happened anywhere e.g. FPS in UK was mandated by OFT, not the then APACS; NEFT in India was mandated by RBI, not IBA. Likewise, it will happen in USA only when it's mandated by the regulator ("politician"?). Not sure whether that's even possible under the current payment structure of USA (Banks-Fed-NACHA-etc.).
5. Since the cost of FPS was incurred by banks, not by the nation, I see no logic in dividing the figure by GDP while arriving at the trivial-sounding GBP 2 number. I don't have the figures handy but it's safe to assume that the cost per bank account would be closer to GBP 100 than GBP 2. Can banks get away by passing on this kind of cost to each accountholder? Therein lies the rub with any FPS-type of RTP: It can't be justified by business case - it will only happen by edict. 

Much as I'd love to claim otherwise, RTP is just one of the dozens of things impacting GDP.

Employee appraisals, software code, customer contracts and many other types of sensitive info drive many industries - not just regulated ones - to enforce COLD policy. COLD is more common than BYOD or, God forbid, COPE even in a purportedly tech-savvy industry like - ahem - IT. So much so that, according to rumors I've heard, losing a company laptop could get one fired in a leading IT company.

I once heard the VP Engineering of a software product company say that putting bugs is a basic birthright of every software developer! While he said them only half seriously, his words reinforce @NanduK's point about software engineering still having a long way to go.

It's good to know that there's an app to shield Millennials from their "social awkwardness" by dividing 400 by 4. I hope the app will also fulfill the Millennials' urge for sharing by posting "I used an app to divide 400 by 4" on the Facebook Newsfeeds of all the 4 Millennials involved in the transaction.

"Chaps is responsible for processing over 92% of all intra-bank payments by value in the UK". Should it be Inter-bank?

@JimW is an outlier because he has returned to cash. I've also returned to cash - even for ecommerce. I've written about the reasons for my switch several times. Suffice to say that they're exactly the opposite of @JimW's: Oversecurity, not lack of security - VbV, OTP, PIN, etc. But, then, I also must be an outlier. Not one of the over 10 Millennials I personally know in the USA uses mobile payments. They all must be outliers. I love the strategy of calling anything that doesn't match a certain hypothesis an outlier.

After being around for several years, mobile payments hasn’t entered the mainstream.  But to use the Ebola scare to promote it signals sheer desperation. Hope that’s also an outlying behavior.