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@JoL + 1. The really big ticket nefarious activities happen via wire transfers thru' the banking system. While I've read about this in fiction novels, it sounds plausible since (a) it's physically impossible to move 10M in cash from Zurich to Turk & Caicos in real time (which is what happened in the latest of such novels I just finished reading last week) (b) a couple of banks have been fined billions for facilitating such nefarious transactions. In this day and age, I'm amazed at how some people stick to the quaint notion that cash (or cryptocurrrency) must mean illicit activity and / or tax evasion and that banking system must mean legitimate activity and / or tax compliance.

Not sure what the average monthly rent is but assuming it to be as low as GBP 250 since the context is "social housing", the share of the online+mobile channel can be worked out as follows:   

• 8500 properties
• Total rent collection per month: GBP 2.125M (8500*250)
• Total rent collection for last 8 months: GBP 17M (2.125M*8)
• Of which rent collection by Online+Mobile channels: GBP 100000.
• Therefore, Online+Mobile Income as % of Total Income: 100000/17M = 0.6%

Not sure if there's a typo somewhere but, as things stand, the Online+Mobile channel accounts for less than 1% of the company's income. Any idea how it has managed to become "vitally important" to Salix Homes?

Looks like banks' efforts at staying profitable have been very successful. According to this WSJ article, the sector's profits are at near record levels. 

http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-banking-industry-profits-racing-to-near-record-levels-1407773976

P2P lending portals that are known for using social media and other signals mentioned by you to supplement / replace traditional credit scores still seem to be struggling to attract custom, going by recent reports that they're seeking regulation to even source customers whose loan applications are rejected by banks (https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=9939). Any idea why there's such a big difference between theory and reality?

People with middle names have been believed to be more creditworthy for a long time. The unnamed Big Data scoring service provider referenced by you is recycling very old news.  

The possibility you've surmised on a "funny note" may not be so far-fetched after all: In the early 2000s, a leading American consulting company mandated that all its employees worldwide must have a middle name or at least a middle initial. In countries like UK where middle names are not a common practice, an "X" was inserted as the dummy middle initial! 

@ParamdeepS:

If I had a penny for everytime I read "passwords will be history", I'd be a three-time millionaire - with the first and second million coming from "cash will be history" and "plastic (credit cards) will be history" respectively!

Jokes apart, using only one device for accessing everything sounds ideal but it's neither desirable nor practical. Not desirable because it goes against the basic principle of security, which dictates that things with different degree of sensitivity must be secured by access control mechanisms of different strengths. Not practical because, even if we somehow hand out such devices to everyone, the cost of installing readers everywhere to read those devices is simply too prohibitive. I was alluding to this in my comment about NFC-smartphone-employee-ID not fulfilling all purposes to which physical cards are put to today. Similarly, while Aadhar cards may be issued to >500M Indians, I haven't come across a single Aadhar card reader that can scan fingerprints to authenticate an Aadhar card holder.    

I'm intrigued when you say fingerprint is "not secure enough". If that's the fate of the outcome of decades of work, there's little hope for newfangled - and somewhat harebrained  - biometric 'factors' like EKG / hearbeat (https://www.finextra.com/community/members/PreviewDComment.aspx?dc_id=12081).

Some may argue that the world has still not even reached the stack era. I still remember the fanfare with which ISO-OSI 7 layer stack model was launched. Meant to supersede the inefficient / insecure TCP/IP standard, OSI was supposed to revolutionize networking and set new standards for datacom. Then we all know what happened: Internet, using TCP/IP. Many decades have passed. TCP/IP still dominates networking. That said, let's see if block supersedes TCP/IP.

Maybe I’m suffering from a time warp but I've been living in this world for a long time: 

1. Outlook, BlackBerry, Android Mail and other apps that have been around for ages don’t need users to enter a password every time they check their email.
2. Fingerprint-scanner equipped smartphones that can unlock themselves without passwords have been around for a while now.
3. Employees have been tapping their chip-embedded ID cards on RFID readers to enter their offices for over 10 years. They’ve also been using physical ID cards to prove their identity with third parties e.g. merchants who offer discounts for employees of certain companies (but not others). It’s technically possible for an NFC-equipped smartphone to replace cards but how would that support the current multipurpose nature of physical cards?

@KittredgeC: TY for your detailed clarifications. My observations were baselined on an industry-standard SaaS solution since it's not often that I read about company-specific offerings on Finextra. 

@DanielE:

Absolutely. Like I observed when SQUARE was launched - it moved hitherto cash transactions to bank-issued credit cards and thereby expand the pool of transactions from which banks could earn interchange revenues. 

There are rumors that banks are planning to “outsource” the task of authentication of all Apple Pay transactions to Apple. While the rumors further say that banks would pay Apple 20 - 50 bps of transaction value for this job, the point is moot: Since “Apple doesn’t know what you bought, where you bought it, or how much you paid.”, it doesn't know the transaction value. Therefore, what's to stop the card networks / issuers from telling Apple that the consumer paid $5 for something when they really paid $500, as Ron S has rightly asks here? Who knows, Apple Pay may give one more chance for banks to go laughing all the way to the bank!

@HarinD: I agree that payment habits - like many other habits - have huge generational bias. Having observed a generational habits in Desktop Email v. WebMail and a few other areas, if our children wave a mobile phone rather than plastic, it'd be because "they've always done that". I don't think they'd be able to explain why.

@KittredgeC:

TY for your detailed reply. 

From what I know of a classical multi-tenanted SaaS model:

1. An individual customer can only decide whether to subscribe to a particular feature or not. But, having subscribed to a particular feature by way of signing up for a certain plan, they CANNOT decide whether to switch on / off a change to that feature. Content and frequency of such updates are determined UNILATERALLY by the vendor and apply universally to all customers the very next time they log on to the software. 
2. I haven't heard anything like "integration architecture", a term you've alluded to many times.
3. My TCO cutoff of 24-36 months does consider the other recurring costs you've mentioned. 

Now if you're referring to a private cloud or a shared service or some other proprietary form of cloud-based offering from your company, I admit my above mentioned observations about industry-standard SaaS might no longer apply.