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Kudos for some sensible and balanced reporting on the subject of fraud. For the first time, I'm seeing a statement like "Meanwhile, losses on CNP transactions rose by 11% in 2012 but, says Financial Fraud Action, this needs to be seen in the context of the sharp 18% increase in card spending on the Internet over the last year". This clearly proves that fraud as a percentage of transaction value is actually going down. I look forward to the day when we can see more accurate headlines like "CNP fraud now rarer than before".

Good point. Not sure whether such a practice is still in vogue but, once upon a time, the customs department in India got to keep a certain percentage of the value of the smuggled goods they confiscated at airports and harbors, with the inspectors involved in the seizure getting cash awards for their personal contribution. 

While doing so, they should be mindful of introducing any incremental false-positives. Otherwise, they might turn down business that they would have accepted previously!

Banks can do a lot more to reduce friction in their applications before pointing a finger at "consumers' contradictory attitudes". 

That said, many people do feel safe about keeping gold and other valuables in a bank vault / locker than inside their own homes. By the same token, they might feel comfortable about storing their master passwords in eLockers offered by some banks (e.g. Wells Fargo, ICICI).

For all its faults, I'm amazed at the sheer popularity enjoyed by the basic credit card over the decades. HDFC Bank and a few other card issuers have been offering "onetime tokens for online purchases" but, despite being around for over five years, their offtake has been poor and COD reigns supreme for ecommerce in India. In an ideal world, OTP, card reader, 2FA, out-of-band authentication and all those nice things should provide more comfort to the user and increase their use of epayments, but in the real world, the inevitable friction they add to the payment process seems to be driving people away from them.

It's hard for a common man to believe that something on the cloud could be safer than something in their personal possession. To me, that's the main reason why password managers haven't managed to enter the mainstream despite being around for over a decade. My personal recommendation: Select passwords in a foreign language in which you're not very conversant. Such passwords are known to be very secure, as I'd highlighted here. You're unlikely to have difficulties remembering them since you anyway know only a few words in that language. What's more, others don't know which are the few words you know in a foreign language and won't be able to figure them out even if they shoulder-surf you as you're entering them on your keyboard.

@StanleyE: +1. According to this research report on retail payments released by RSR Research a couple of days ago, retailers are thoroughly frustrated with the multiple directions in which the present stakeholders are pulling mobile payments and have reacted by not making any budgetary allocations for any new form of payments as of now. So, plastic is going to be around for a while!

@MichaelK: If, indeed, PayPal has infringed PayOne's patent, it's likely to have known long ago that it was doing so, and would have likely already prepared a defence in anticipation of a potential lawsuit by PayOne in future. On the other hand, this infringement might come as a total shock to Home Depot. Besides, Home Depot is a FORTUNE 500 company with lot more "rep to protect" as against PayPal which is used to listening to irate merchants on a daily basis without getting bothered in the least bit. As a result, it would seem logical that PayOne chose to go after Home Depot rather than PayPal. And, why not, since patent owners are legally permitted to sue the buyer, not just the infringer.

@AlexP: TY for your comment. The first page of Google SERP for "Net1's MVC technology" is full of entries related to Microsoft ASP.NET MVC. Is that what you meant? 

Kudos to Bankinter for showing that Banks Have Nothing To Fear From TELCOs.