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@SandraG: While it's impossible to find a solution to this problem via these comments, let me simply point out that there's a lesson to be learned from the drivers of the migration from checks to epayments in Europe. Having personally experienced the transition from DM to Euro in Germany, I can say that B2B ePayments were the norm in Europe well before the launch of Euro. The drivers lie not in the cost of checks versus epayments - as a matter of fact, the migration happened despite checks being free and epayments attracting fees in most parts of Europe - but in the potential of epayments to deliver efficiency gains in the end-to-end payments process. 

@Sandra G: This age-old saying has frustrated many a technology provider over the years, including me! But, there's an approach to counter the apathy resulting from it, and it is: "What if you don't know it's broken?" The technology provider needs to invest far more in creating an alternative packaging of their offering in order to carry off this counter approach. But, from personal experience, I can confirm that it has worked on many occasions, especially when the alternative packaging can be made to resonate well with industry hot topics and business pain areas.  

I don't think financial inclusivity was - or is - an attractive business proposition from the perspective of banks. This seems to be equally true in emerging markets (ex: India) as developed ones (ex: USA, UK).

MNOs can fill the gap only if they're permitted to take deposits and provide other financial services without any link to banks, like in the case of Kenya. However, where regulators only permit banks to carry out these activities (ex: India), I don't hold much hope for the spread of financial inclusion - MNOs can't do it, banks won't do it. Eliminating free checking - an intent articulated by a few large American banks in recent times - is a huge kicker for bringing in additional revenues. Under the circumstance, I'm not sure if they will change their approach towards financial inclusion.

There's no doubt that checks are easy. But, they're equally easy on both sides of the Atlantic. It is true that the supplier name and address - the two pieces of information required to cut a check - are readily available on the supplier's invoice. But, in Continental Europe, if not also in the UK, bank details are as easily available - not just in invoices but even in the footer section of company letterheads. This makes B2B ePayments fairly easy in Continental Europe.  

Why is it more difficult to get hold of bank details in the US? I presume it has to do with support of certain remote ACH payment types in the US, which force individuals and companies to keep their bank details confidential, unlike in Continental Europe.

Since we're seeing biometrics being proposed as an alternative to VbV and MasterCard SecureCode, it follows that the context is CNP / online. That being the case, are we to assume that webcam for iris scanning, fingerprint scanner for capturing fingerprint impressions, and all other types of biometrics authentication equipment are part of basic hardware? Otherwise, I'm not sure how biometrics will work without any additional hardware.

A few years ago, the datacenter of a leading bank located in West England was hit by flash floods, I asked their IT Director what their BCP was. With a twinkle in his eye, he replied, "mops and buckets"! 

Although cited in a lighter vein, the above example highlights one critical challenge posed by most prevailing BCP/DRP technologies, namely, the extremely high cost of network bandwidth required to keep the data between the primary and secondary sites in synch with each other in realtime. The telecom provider in this instance was simply unable to provide the required bandwidth within the required timescales, which meant the bank had to settle for a few hours of phase lag between the two sites.

Personally, I appreciate my bank's efforts at upselling and cross-selling - after all, I'll feel bad if my bank introduced new products and services and never bothered to communicate them to me.

However, I've realized that many people seemingly don't and have read about complaints giving examples of thoughtless and irrelevant offers they've received from banks.

To put things in perspective, it might help if readers can highlight a few concrete examples of what they believe their banks can do to help them and a majority of their customer base without selling additional products / services. I've really not come across any such examples of what people think banks can do right.

Although bulk discounts for frequent users is a good example, I'm not sure if this benefit would apply to the broad base of banking customers since many basic banking services are free anyway in many countries. 

I learned from a recent experience as a supplier that, even in the B2B world, there are certain payments that are small enough to be authorized by VP-level of people in the customer organization. Such payments can be made in minutes by VPs using their credit cards and then claimed back from their company via their standard claims reimbursement process.

This experience exposed "frictionless payment initiation" as one more reason why suppliers should consider accepting credit card payments, especially for cross-border transactions. In fact, in such situations, acceptance of credit card boosts the chance of the sale happening in the first place. 

On the other hand, when I wasn't able to accept credit card payments due to issues being faced by PayPal in India, the following alternatives proved to be extremely painful and almost killed the sale:

1. EFT. According to their company policy, only the Group Chairman of the customer organization was authorized to initiate EFTs. When this person could finally find the time for this activity amid his busy schedule, they discovered that their bank - a local community bank in Illinois, USA - apparently lacked knowledge of terms like BIC involved in cross-border payments and hence had to regret inability to process such a transaction.    
2. Western Union / MoneyGram. Could be used to make payments only to me as an individual, not to my company. So, this option was also ruled out. 
3. Cheque. While this was the option that worked eventually, it took 35 days to sight good funds in my company's bank account, not to mention that it attracted some fees.

While my experience possibly pertains only to a small percentage of B2B payment types, it does illustrate the merits of accepting credit card payments in such niches.

Amazon DE seems to support Direct Debit payments. 

Bezahlung per Bankeinzug >>> Payment by direct debit

http://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=504928.

@John: Retail and corporate banking customers in the UK pay hefty fees for CHAPS realtime transfers. Likewise, in the USA, they pay a few dollars fees for Expedited Payments, which is only same-day. Given that CHAPS and Expedited Payments simply transfer funds faster, it is not far-fetched to expect people to pay for FPS, which has a theoretical SLA of 2 hours but often executes the transfer nearly in realtime.  

A couple of years ago, another leading bank was planning to launch a product for realtime cross-border incoming remittances into the UK. While paucity of space does not permit me to get into full details of this product, suffice to say that it was going to use FPS for the UK leg of the transaction, and that it had a far greater value proposition as compared to Western Union / MoneyGram transfers that cost more and take hours. I haven't heard much about this product in recent times, though.