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"...ensure that price rather than technology-driven speed decides...". Well, there we go: HFT was one area where banks were clearly using technology to gain competitive advantage and now the regulators are threatening to put an end to that. 

@PaulL: I'm aware of the Pine white paper but I subscribe to Ron Shevlin's conclusion: "...not all consumers need experiences or transformations."

@PaulL:

You've probably misunderstood me. 

I wasn't talking about regulation in general. I was referring to the charge of discrimination arising specifically from over-personalization of a product or service in a regulated industry like banking. As you can see from this post by Ron Shevlin, this is a real and present danger in front of banks.

Just as marketing campaigns for undifferentiated products result in low conversion and hence result in high marketing costs, overpersonalized products demand multiple campaigns and therefore have the same effect. I'm not against personalization to a certain degree. But, as I've highlighted in my company blog post To Personalize Or Not To Personalize Is The Question, 'segment of one' and such forms of personalization are neither sustainable for providers nor universally desired by customers.

At one point around 15-20 years ago, all payment cards issued in India used to have the cardholder's photo on them. Not sure when this practice stopped but, when I just checked, none of my current debit or credit cards has any picture. Not sure how many customers miss them. I for one didn't even notice it until I specifically looked them up before posting this comment. 

@MattW: I didn't know "tap" was colloquial! I've read and written it for a fairly long time. Just today, I saw it being used twice in a single article in India's leading business newspaper Economic Times about the use of SMAC technologies for election campaigning: Once to refer to Gen Y, as in "The idea is to tap them" and the second time to reference social media, as in "It is vital to tap this medium". 

According to this latest FED article about mobile payments in USA,

1. The statement "This is the year for mobile payments" has been doing the rounds for a decade.
2. Consumers are "are highly satisfied with their current payment method".
3. "Moving consumers from their current habits will require the achievement of a strategic inflection point—something that many payments industry stakeholders have tried to achieve over the years but have failed to do so."

According to this chart in the FORTUNE magazine, mobile based financial transactions account for a mere 0.01% of US GDP.

As we near the end of Q1-2014, it still doesn't look like mobile payments has entered the mainstream in USA.

While they're enabled by modern technology, highly targeted products in regulated industries like banking face business challenges related to customer privacy concerns, overdiscrimination charges from customers and regulators, high marketing costs, fulfillment difficulties, and so on. Not sure why BarclayCard took this decision but I'm guessing that one or more of the aforementioned issues played a role.

Personally, I'm a big fan of interoperability. But, in this day and age where proprietary walled gardens like WhatsApp are threatening the future of interoperable SMSs, I'm pleasantly surprised that interoperability is still considered valuable.

Compared to this, banks seem to be extremely sophisticated users of API technology e.g. HFT consumes social media sentiment and takes a buy / sell decision in milliseconds. That said, it's not self-evident that Interpol publishes an API of info related to stolen passports.

Is it obvious that Sender needs PayM and Receiver does not (even to cash out)? Otherwise, this is as closed-loop as PingIt or PayPal. On another note, it'd be interesting to watch how PayM will handle the fairly common situation of a bene having one mobile number and multiple bank accounts.

Technology may be "rapidly changing the face of financial services" but wasn't AmEx one of the megabanks that vetoed the introduction of an American equivalent of FPS in NACHA late last year?