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An analyst report on Retail Currency Management technology preempted skepticism for the very concept of currency by pointing out that checks were supposed to replace cash decades ago.

As the recent reversal in the case of 'chequeless' in UK illustrates, cashless, chequeless and many other 'less'es can happen a lot faster if only the drivers changed from 'cut costs for payees' to 'add convenience, security, etc. for payors." Where service providers can pass on costs to their customers, they have a perverse incentive to let costs remain high and the status quo is unlikely to change for a very long time. On the other hand, email and a few other disruptive technologies have shown that it is possible to bring about massive shifts in consumer behavior in less than 10 years by being oriented at the consumer. Judged by this yardstick, contactless cards probably have the best shot at the 'currency killer' title. 

@Mike K:

Like you, I've worked in a professional capacity to provide ePayment solutions. However, when it comes to my personal life, I haven't found a more convenient alternative to checks because of the high degree of friction involved in most current forms of ePayments. I've written about them on my personal blog on several occasions. Suffice to say that they revolve around inadequate field lengths for narrations, anxiety in entering the beneficiary account number, and so on. 

Props for hitting the nail on the head when you say "The reason the UK initiative failed is because no adequate alternatives were developed." I've voiced a similar view on Finextra and believe that there's no point in blaming the common man for choosing checks as the path of least resistance. I share your opinion that solution has to come from banks and payment solutions providers and not the government. 

Great post, that too in an off-the-beaten-track area of sales. We come across a lot of companies who mistakenly believe that product knowledge and / or domain expertise are the most important prerequisites for a salesperson only to realize a few months / years later that selling involves, well, selling, a skill that goes far beyond product or domain. 

I have heard about a top global bank that asked exactly the same four questions and spent tens of millions to implement a multicurrency global liquidity management system to find the answers. Midway through the implementation, a combination of challenges related to data quality, systems integration and change management set against the backdrop of a regulatory deadline reduced the scope of a project to a Euro liquidity management system. At the end of the project, liquidity management went largely out the window and the bank was left with a payment processing system for a new payment type.

Not to single out any bank or technology vendor, but noble goals don't always translate into concrete results, which is probably why Excel still reigns supreme. This is not unique to TMS for, according to a saying I've heard, "70% of FORTUNE 500 companies use ERP but 90% of them submit board reports in Excel!" It's not very surprising that so many solutions pitched as "overcoming the tyranny of Excel" don't secure budgets from the C-Suite who are used to seeing fancy reports and charts - not tyranny - in Excel!

Kudos to these two banks for taking the early lead on using mobile and social media to jump on to the 'omnichannel banking' bandwagon. This move should resonate well with the preferences of an overwhelming majority of customers to research banking products online but buy them at branches.  

Source: Survey across Australia, Canada, USA and many other countries done by CEB Financial Services Customer Experience Survey, as cited in this TowerGroup report. 

Why blame politicians for the sins committed by banks and solution providers in designing systems with so much friction that many of their ePayment products are rejected by mainstream banking customers? Not just in the UK, the recent decision by INGDirect USA makes this point eloquently: Although its customers have chosen to bank with a direct bank that has no branches, they clearly want the convenience of making payments by paper checks instead of jumping several hoops to put through an electronic payment.

Amazon didn't cause a BORDERS moment by getting bookstores banned. Nor did iPhone disrupt the mobile phone market by lobbying with some industry assocation to turn against the BlackBerries or Nokias of the world. Similarly, ePayment providers need to realize that they can change the status quo only through the strengths of their products and UX and not via an artificially-guaranteed cheque-less market.

Ironically, the recent decision to continue with cheques in the UK might actually boost ePayments: Finally, banks and solution providers might start designing products and devising go to market strategies in such a way that customers voluntarily choose ePayments over cheques.

+1 re. free security software from HSBC. I had to eventually uninstall it. 

It will be interesting to watch how this issue pans itself out. Will banks implement better security measures for Internet Banking yet keep it simple and convenient enough so that more customers migrate to remote channels? Or, will the enhanced security create even more friction in remote channels such that customers will troop back to branches?  

The regulation on 'alien' or 'rival' ATM cash withdrawals swung between the two ends of the pendulum in India over the past year but the state of equillibrium reached recently seems very fair to customers and banks alike: 5 free transactions per month, and a nominal charge for each transaction thereafter. Since this policy is uniformly applicable for all banks and across all types of accounts (on which ATM cash withdrawals are permitted), there is no discrimination against customers at the bottom of pyramid or anyone else. According to personal and anecdotal evidence, branch footfall has dropped significantly since this policy was implemented.   

CARD Act, Reg. E and now Dodd-Frank-Durbin are examples of regulations that mandate many banking fees to be "reasonable" - which means set at levels that reflect true costs. Most bank payments shops should have no difficulties in agreeing that your suggestions could help them acquire competitive advantage, enhance customer satisfaction, and so on. However, I am not sure if they would want to adopt them to cut costs because (a) They've gotten this far with these kinds of costs (b) Switching accounts is a pain and there's no guarantee that the next bank is any better than the previous one, and, most importantly (c) The next regulation around the corner could force them to reduce fees for payments to match their reduced costs, which means their revenues would nosedive from their current stratospheric levels.

Recently, even I had the chance to reverse the table on a bank when they called me to reconfirm my credit card reward redemption order. After years of answering stupid ID verification questions whenever I've called them, it was great fun this time to flatly refuse to answer any of their questions to me and instead make them answer a few of mine to prove their ID to me!