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I don't envy banks. Don't do contactless and face the charge of being uninnovative. Do contactless and face the charge of being inflexible. But cardwise switchability and limits are good features (assuming they're technically feasible). Banks should be able to eat the additional costs of supporting them at least on checking accounts that attract fees (assuming free checking is not the norm in Australia). 

"Free" was another feature of FPS when it was launched! On another note, back in 2006-7 when it was merely a glint in the eyes of APACS / OFT, FPS was expected to sunset BACS within 10 years of launch. The way FPS is gaining traction, the end of BACS might be even closer than 2018.

All's well that ends well - to me, the last line "absolute preferences are becoming increasingly meaningless" is the key takeaway.

@BrettK: Congrats. I also liked the AR app spearheaded by @simonpomeroynz (http://ow.ly/A1Gby).

It would be interesting to know whether the use of good old NetBanking from tablets and smartphones is counted under Internet Banking or Mobile Banking.

Kudos to St. George for adapting its mobile banking offering in tune with customer preference. To all the market studies it must've done to gauge the pulse of the market, let me add one more: I polled my 500+ LinkedIn Connections to ask them whether they preferred fingerprint or a strong NetBanking type of password like MvC!@#&1 to access their Mobile Banking app. An overwhelming majority (>70%) of respondents voted in favor of Fingerprint.

Why shouldn't this equally well be called the biggest "misbuying scandal"? If students were smart enough to take the loan at the start of their university term, a few years later after they finish the university term, they'd better be smarter enough to figure out ways to manage and pay off the loan. While the creditor can provide whatever assistance they wish to provide, they should be under no obligation to do so. The responsibility for repayment lies squarely on the student's (or their loan guarantor's) shoulders the moment they signed up for the loan. And, as I'd highlighted in Let Banks Chase Their Defaulters Instead Of Seeking Bailouts, banks have every right to chase them for repayments.

According to this FAST COMPANY article, SQUARE makes a loss on mobile payments at Starbucks and will continue to do until its contract expires next year even though it has deadpooled its Wallet product. Ironically, in the interest of its own financial well-being, SQUARE must be hoping that the share of mobile payments goes down at SBUX!

Banks are experts in getting rid of subprime assets by packaging them as MBS, ARMS, CDO and other innovative products. They did that with mortgages during the GFC. If they find payday loans to be as lucrative, we can be sure they'll try and repeat the same strategy in the payday loan market. For banks that don't / can't use this approach and must comply with tighter lending norms post GFC, greater visibility into lenders' risk profiles could equally well lead to rejections of loans to the payday market as acceptance.

When it was first launched 4-5 years ago, inControl focused on restaurants and gas stations as its primary use cases. As I'd highlighted in Credit Cards Come A Full Circle at the time, stopping such offline card payments after the consumption had happened could result in a few hilarious situations that undermined the value of inControl. It makes sense that MC has now restricted inControl to online transactions, where declines are meaningful because payments are sought before the consumption happens.