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Props for a well-balanced article. As for "Do we want a Stock Market that attracts investors and companies to list and find capital to build new factories or develop new products?", didn't Futures, Options, CDO, CDO2 and other structured financial products undermine that notion well before HFT entered the scene and drove stock markets even further away from their original purpose?

While it was enunciated a long time back, isn't the basic principle behind SEPA still the same, namely, equalization of fees for domestic and cross-border payment transactions within the EURO zone? It's not surprising that SEPA's threat to reduce their payments fee income would push banks to treat SEPA as a necessary evil. However, shouldn't its converse - the opportunity to cut down overall payment processing costs - provide the required pull effect for corporates? If it lacks business case for both banks and corporates, then I can't help wondering who SEPA is really targeted at.

Why am I not surprised at all? Reconciliation is just another mission-critical business process where Excel comes to aid, a few others being cash flow forecasting by treasury, balance sheet and P&L for a company's board of directors, business activity monitoring, mobile secondary sales in FMCG / CPG industry. Instead of finding fault with end-users, providers of industrial-grade solutions - for reconciliation or other business processes - should introspect why surveyed end users "encountered delays or problems when onboarding new financial products", were forced to limit the "number of new products that can be created" using these systems that were purchased and implemented at huge cost, and so on.

Looks like there's growing realization that offers and redemption make a more compelling value proposition for NFC than payments. However, these companies are kidding themselves if they think it's going to be simpler creating this business, since an "equivalent to Google on the handset" already exists, and it's called Google. According to Fact # 9 in this article about Google Ads, "Google dominates mobile search advertising, taking 97% of mobile search spend".

When customers get frustrated with digital channels, I agree that they'll start to move. But, from personal experience and anecdotal evidence, the move will be to a branch of the same bank. Switching costs are high (Source: Ron Shevlin's blog post http://snarketing2dot0.com/2012/10/12/why-do-people-switch-banks/). Most customers will inevitably try finding joy by visiting the branch before deciding to leave the bank altogether. Therefore, banks wanting to improve customer retention might be better off investing their scarce dollars on beefing up the branch than anywhere else. 

"The group has not provided definitive evidence that it has the card data...". Given that customers have entrusted banks to protect the data, the onus should be on them (i.e. banks) to prove that they haven't lost the card data.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I honestly don't see what this big hue and cry is all about: Haven't banks been doing exactly this by stuffing "inserts" and printing "onserts" from retailers on credit card and bank account statements for ages?

"M-Pesa ... is currently available in ... India ...".

Not true. I actually called Vodafone to inquire about M-Paisa and the CSR told me it wasn't available. Apparently, Vodafone launched a pilot of M-Paisa - M-Pesa's equivalent in India - in one Indian state (Rajasthan), pulled out of it, and never launched the service anywhere else in India subsequently.

Mobile payments - whether done by NFC or QR code or whatever - are always treated as CNP, thereby attracting higher MDF costs. This is true not just in this specific case but in all contexts. 'Walking out without scanning' - and hence paying - for something is a real risk with such mobile self-checkout systems. When I inquired with the provider of one such system about this point, I was told that shop-lifting happens even in cashier/till-based checkout systems and that it hasn't found any significant evidence that self-checkout poses a greater risk of shop-lifting. While the digerati might be satisfied with this reply, I personally found it very feeble and so might retail executives who have to bear the cost of pilferage.

I'm surprised that such a regulation doesn't already exist in Australia. There is more than one law in the USA - they have been around for at least 5 years that I know of - which make it mandatory for banks and FIs to disclose any breach of unencrypted data.  TD Bank's recent announcement of data breach was likely in response to the requirements under these laws. The only way customers will accept the Australian Banking Association's claim that the actual level of risk of data breach "could well be zero" is if banks can prove that the compromised data did not lead to any misuse, instead of fervently hoping that it didn't as TD Bank seems to be doing.