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Phew... 50B messages per day is H*U*G*E. To put that in perspective, UK FPS is rated for a peak volume of "only" 300M messages / day and Twitter handles "only" 175M messages a day. Besides, we can be sure that a good number of the 50B messages processed by CAT NMS will be about more than what someone had for lunch or dinner on that day, thereby multiplying the processing complexity! Given these figures, CAT NMS might prove to T*H*E largest IT project in any sector ever, period. That said, I noticed that the 50B figure on the CAT NMS website refers to the daily volume of records, not messages. Not sure if each message will contain only one record.

Notwithstanding the lack of breadth in their product range, banks introduced loyalty programs for credit cards ages ago. If that doesn't prove their innovativeness, the dizzying array of structured products like CDO, CDO2, CDS, MBS and ARMS should. The only problem is, when banks get too innovative and fail - as so many innovations do - it's the common man who has to pick up the tab. When it comes to their money, people value trust and stability far more than innovation. In an industry that has >8K players just in the USA, no bank will be able to clean up - certainly not by following Apple's strategy, which seems to be sputtering for Apple itself of late.

Having just been released from the shackles of the decades-old "no surcharge" rule, many merchants in the USA are likely to levy surcharge for credit card payments sooner or later. When that happens, I'll go back to cash, like @BridgetM. This is another reason why the movement from cash to noncash MOPs won't be a one-way street, as I'd predicted here.

This is a classical case of getting the desired answer by asking the wrong audience. If Fundtech was really serious about finding out whether the new rules would benefit consumers, it should've surveyed consumers instead of banks. Interestingly, if "43% say consumers never rescind orders", it means that 57% do! To me, that sounds like a large enough majority of consumers who should find the new rules beneficial.

TY for the detailed clarification. I was actually thinking of banks - not PAYE - fulfilling the role of income declaration. Apart from cash-in-hand, all other incomes - viz. house rent, returns on investment, capital gain on sale of house, etc. - are likely to be routed through bank accounts. In that case, aren't the banks concerned obligated by law to report these transactions to the taxman (as I think they are in at least three countries I know of, namely, India, Germany, USA)? If so, all these other incomes would automatically be treated as declared income with the assessee compelled to cough up taxes on them sooner or later, and my point would remain. If not, I get your point.

Thanks for these numbers but my point is different: Given that ATM users have already declared their income by the act of keeping it in a bank account, isn't showing them an ad about undeclared income somewhat akin to "preaching to the converted"? I'd think that this ad is more suited to places that are hotspots of undeclared income. I'm not sure if bus shelters and shady corners of tube stations fall under this category but, by definition, ATMs don't.

Wish Citi had used "Multifunction Kiosk" or some such name for this device instead of calling it ATM and triggering the obvious apprehension voiced by @FinextraM. I remember HSBC using a non-ATM name to denote similar equipment installed in the employee-less branch it opened on the shopping arcade of the Bank Street side of Canary Wharf tube station a few years ago. If I remember right, this "branch" had four regular ATMs for cash withdrawal and two of these multifunction devices for other purposes.

@ChrisD: The creative does seem compelling but, as I'd said here, ATM users hardly appears to the appropriate target group for an ad of this nature. Since an ad's effectiveness depends on more than just its creative, I'm curious to know in what way you found it effective.

@MagnusB: "The ability for one back to accept customers who have already had their identity verified at another bank is already available across many countries including ... India ...". This would be great, but, it's news to me. In fact, as I'd highlighted in my op-ed article titled "Impact of Regulation on Financial Services Providers" that appeared in August 2012 issue of the Journal of Internet Banking And Commerce, the KYC done during the purchase of one product (e.g. savings account) from a bank does not even suffice for the purchase of another product (e.g. pension) from the same bank. Furthermore, even the KYC done for one product has to be renewed every year or two, even for the same product. If you're referring to the newly launched UIDAI / Aadhar card, (1) It's issued by the government and not by any bank (2) Most banks accept it only as proof of ID, not address, for which they continue to demand proof of residence documents issued by other banks / telcos / public authorities (not their own).

As this article explains, for cross-border reverse factoring to work, it's necessary for the buyer's bank in two different countries to work together. Whether it's due to cultural differences or a tendency to protect their own turfs or whatever, different subsidiaries of large MNCs don't seem to collaborate too well across their global operations. I've experienced this tendency across many industries, not just banks. In one personal experience, it was a nightmare to get a certain global IT company's Indian subsidiary to act in consonance with the same company's UK subsidiary although both were serving the same MNC bank. Since the situation was critical, it was necessary to reach out to the company's US HQ, which finally intervened and enforced the required collaboration. But, I doubt if such joint efforts would happen under BAU conditions, and I won't blame only banks for that.