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Assuming that you can buy your train ticket and check your bank account balance via PC-Web, am curious to know if you could do them via mobile web from your smartphone / tablet. At least in the case of train ticket, the lack of mobile booking solution might harken back to deficiencies even in the PC-Web solution viz. lack of support for e-tickets and the need to print out a paper ticket from a kiosk that is not necessarily present in all stations. In an extreme example dating back a few years, I remember that a colleague of mine booked a ticket online for a train departing from London Bridge station but had to visit Waterloo / Victoria to print out the paper ticket because there was no 'Fast Terminal' at London Bridge!

Back in 2007-08, I remember the Krispy Kremes doughnut store in Canary Wharf displaying one or two Barclays contactless card terminals prominently and my using them during every one of my visits. Finextra's experience at its local sandwich shop and elsewhere is a clarion call for bank and nonbank financial services providers to not only craft products that solve customer pain areas but also shout from the rooftop that they do so. If this is the state of affairs of contactless terminals that have been around for so many years, I wonder what fate awaits NFC mobile payments which impose even more friction for consumers in terms of firing up an app, selecting the appropriate card, entering a PIN and hoping for strong enough network signal.

Having worked for several years for a leading core banking software provider, I was curious to find out what kind of open standards exist in this space. After reading the entire article, I remain curious. Are we referring to open communication standards between CBS and surround systems (e.g. ISO8587 with ATM/POS Switches), which are already followed by leading CBS vendors and banks in Asia? Or, are we referring to open standards within the various modules of the CBS itself, which, far as I know, don't exist in Europe?

To add to @Finextra Member, there's one more hassle of having multiple accounts: Forgetting to declare a couple of them in your income tax return, only to be reminded by the taxman to cough up tax and penalty on the interest income accrued in them. Not a first world problem, probably, but can be a hassle in high interest economies like India.

By their very nature of having different withdrawal frequencies and lock in periods, money in different accounts is weighted differently for capital adequacy purposes. Therefore, even if banks' internal silos crumbled, I am not sure if they can offer @Finextra Member's dream account under the current regulatory framework. Besides, I'm sure bankers created different types of accounts only because people expressed different financial needs. I for one am perfectly comfortable about sweeping any surplus funds from my current / checking account into a separate savings account periodically. So might many others.

For several reasons - all genuine and compliant with its TOS - I have three different accounts with PayPal, so I don't know who are these nonbanks who are 'stepping in' to offer all-in-one-and-one-in-all type of accounts.

In the brave new world where Apple, Facebook, Google, PayPal, Square and scores of other non-banks are apparently threatening to disintermediate banks, I'd have thought that 'bank account' itself is an outdated term and that 'Non Bank Account' is the product that better captures the zeitgeist. Just joking...

Everyone understands what 'checking account' means. So, IMHO, it is a waste of marketing dollars for banks to rebrand 'checking account' to 'bank account' or some such thing. Besides, notwithstanding what analysts and statistics say about the declining use of checks - BTW, I find this spelling far more phonetic than the contrived alternative - we see fairly contradictory trends on the ground:

1. Even Internet-only accounts now offer check books e.g. ING Direct USA.
2. Mobile RDC for offsite deposit of checks is perhaps the only 'killer app' in mobile banking in the US today.
3. To set up a bank account for direct credit via EFT, the Indian regulator asks for a canceled check to prove account ownership. Paradoxical as this might sound, I trust the regulator to know what it is doing. Among other accomplishments, it has established an ePayment system called NEFT in India, which has been hailed as one of its kind by BIS in its recent report on global retail payments innovations. In any case, banks have no choice but to comply with the regulator's edict, paradoxical or not.

Just as analysts have been predicting the death of cash for over five decades, I expect their predictions about checks to last at least half as long. Until then, 'checking account' is quite fine.

14MB for such an app is indeed high. In India, most 3G plans charge around US$ 10 / mo. for 500MB data usage, so it's still conceivable to download this app via 3G. If 3G is much costlier in Australia, I agree that most users there would decide to download it only via WiFi. Which is a pity - by taking away the scope for 'instant gratification', CBA risks reduced CTA and lower conversion.

I've used Times intARact on Android. The app size is only 1.69MB. I did spot it on the Apple AppStore here, and it says app size is 3MB. In case the app is restricted to certain geographies (e.g. India), I think you won't be able find it from Australia.

As for usage of the app, Google Play shows # of installs in the public domain whereas AppStore doesn't. While both may supply many more usage metrics to the app owner, I'm not sure if CBA will share them in open. At least, far as I know, none of the advertisers using intARact have done so.

Thanks but the crux of my observation still remains. Downloadable mobile apps flaunt their ability to provide better UX than mobile web apps. So, making them downloadable - not just usable - over 3G is a cross that mobile developers must bear. This is even more true for an app intended to engage deeper with a highly fungible commodity like a newspaper ad. Most people wouldn't have carried the newspaper home, or, even if they did, wouldn't have remembered to go back to the CBA ad. BTW, although I hadn't mentioned it before, I'd downloaded the Times intARact app via 3G.

"The local papers have a downloadable iphone app with newspaper ads that interact with the phone (mind you, I didn't have wifi at my coffee shop so will have to do later)."

Talking about technology, just curious to know why CBA's mobile app won't work without WiFi. To me, a mobile app that doesn't work on 3G sounds like a contradiction in terms. India's leading newspaper The Times of India has a multi-OS mobile app called Times intARact which works fine on WiFi and 3G. In fact, I happen to have used it only on 3G to experience the augmented reality extension to many recent print ads. 

It's ironic that the true power of a smarphone - anywhere, anytime on - is so badly undermined by problems in another kind of power - battery! Personally, I like targeted ads and LBS apps among other smartphone goodies. While all suggestions to preserve battery life are useful, I begin to wonder if following them wouldn't downgrade the smartphone to its poorer cousin - feature phone. 

As the subprime mortgage crisis exposed, bankers make more bonus when they lend more money.

If, this time around, they're reluctant to make more loans to small businesses, there must be something more than lethargy or complacency to explain their behavior viz.:

1. Increased capital requirements to comply with Basel-III
2. Heightened scrutiny of their Non Performing Assets by regulators (this has already started happening in India), and
3. Starting troubles faced by non-banking competitors like Wonga under regulatory oversight, well before they've become 'too big to fail'.