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Gareth:

I agree with your root cause analysis, namely, that "banks treat customers as captive". This assumption by banks has traditionally been true because closing down one bank account and opening another is not as simple as switching to another e-tailer. However, when constantly faced with problems, customers are increasingly choosing to do more business with other banks, thus lowering revenue per account for their primary banks. This is something I've pointed out in one of my blog posts:      

http://sketharaman.com/blog/2008/09/04/how-usability-can-increase-adoption-of-internet-banking/

With the likes of Forrester now weighing in on this subject, we might hopefully see some concreate improvements from banks around usability and friction of their Internet Banking applications.  

Amazon has been offering Bill Me Later (BML) as a standard payment method. While not positioned explicitly as an e-invoice, BML displays many attributes of one viz. deferred billing, consolidated billing, once a month payment just like electronic payment of utility bill, and so on.  BML has been a regular feature of Amazon USA for over 2-3 years although I'm not sure if it is offered outside the USA. 

The employees whose 12 working days are freed up are typically accounting staff who don't automatically qualify to work in a company's production / development / customer service functions. Even assuming that retraining helps some of them qualify for the transfer, it's only natural for the buyer of e-invoicing technology to weigh the savings squeezed out of 12 working days versus the additional cost of retraining.

Such analyses tend to cut both ways, thus presenting major challenges to positioning e-invoicing - or any other - technology using headcount reduction as the key benefit.

"Push email" - or the ability to receive emails in the background without needing a log on to the email application - is the hallmark of BlackBerry and probably contributed to its success. At the same time, it made it addictive ("CrackBerry"), wrecked business meetings and sowed the seeds of many a marital discord.

Deutsche Bank's move makes me wonder if companies and their employees are signaling a strong urge to restore work-life balance by choosing a platform like iPhone that lacks push email. 

As products and services are becoming more complicated, complaints about them are getting increasingly trickier to convey, understand and resolve. On the other hand, 'cryptc n SMS / IM style of comms reglrly adpted by both sides is excrbting the sitn'.

In a recent blog post, I shared a few examples from my personal experience of how complaints were handled by banks and other companies.  

http://sketharaman.com/blog/2010/11/21/how-humanlike-are-virtual-agents-part-2/

In the final analysis, it appeared that virtual agents could supplant lower-end call center staff for handling many types of complaints.

However, while there's no scarcity of process knowledge, training or technology to improve the complaints handling process, I doubt if this is a high priority area for too many banks and other companies (barring a few exceptions like Zappos.com, which have superior customer service enshrined in their corporate charter). When resources are scarce, is it any surprise that complaints department is not exactly the first in line to receive funding for new initiatives? 

By treating the complaints resolution process as opportunities for upselling or cross-selling additional products and services, banks might be able to find the justification required to secure additional funding for their new initiatives in this space. Depending upon their internal culture and customer profile, while some can afford to do this brazenly whereas others might have to be subtle about it, this appears to be one pragmatic approach of bringing about a sea change in this area.     

@Mathew: Not sure what are Virtual Cards. I'm sure they're not the same as Corporate Cards that have been used by corporates to settle Travel & Entertainment expenses for a long time. In case virtual cards mean the same as p-Cards (Procurement Cards) issued by banks and used by corporates for making payments for their direct and indirect materials, then the benefit analysis needs to factor in merchant fees attracted by p-Cards, which diminish the potential for ROI, if not undermine it altogether.    

Since this kind of thing seems to be happening rather regularly, LUSH shouldn't be held singularly at fault. At the same time, e-tailers can't afford to get blase about this issue. Due to no fault of its customers - other than to place their trust on LUSH to keep their financial information safe - LUSH is putting its customers to a lot of trouble by asking customers to contact their banks for advice.

Even as the customers have to bear the anxiety, can't LUSH at least spare them the effort by taking this up collectively on behalf of all affected customers with the respective banks?

@Russell Burke: You've brought up a very interesting - and potentially sensitive - anamoly. The difference between technical capability and business model is already exposing such anamolies in the two e-payments schemes in India. RTGS for corporate payments works in realtime and NEFT for retail payments is specified to work as a T+2 scheme. However, lacking a separate technology backbone, NEFT transactions are processed over the RTGS platform. As a result, some banks give NEFT credits virtually in realtime, whereas others do so only after 2 days!

In an ideal world, it should be possible to walk into the branch and resolve a tricky issue quickly. However, for around five to ten years, branch staff has been trained to divert customers visiting the branch to call centers or Internet Banking websites. As a result, while they might be able to offer a more conducive environment, it's questionable whether they have the tools and expertise to resolve issues any better than the nice men (or women) in Bangalore (or Dundee or Glasgow).

At this juncture, it would be going against the tide to try and do more via the branch network. Instead, banks should leverage Rich Internet Applications and other contemporary technologies as a more pragmatic way of enhancing the customer experience via Internet Banking and Contact Centers.

I think incorrect messaging from its key players is largely responsible for the yawning gap between forecasted and actual revenues of m-payments. Let me just cite two examples:

1. For decades, it has been natural for people to carry their wallets with them when they leave home. In fact, there are several people - me included - who feel uncomfortable if we don't carry our wallets with us when we leave home. Against that backdrop, how effective is it for m-payments providers to keep harping on the message "don't bother to carry your wallets" to promote their wares? It's not as though carrying wallets is such a big pain that we need alleviation from m-payments. 
2. For regulatory and / or other reasons, many types of m-payments in many countries are linked to a credit or debit card, which presupposes existence of a bank account. The one exception to this is GenY Mobile Payments like Bong and Zoku (more on them at http://sketharaman.com/blog/2009/06/25/mobile-payments-let-you-enjoy-convenience-and-security/). However, most of go to market strategies of m-payments providers abound with messaging around "financial services for the unbanked", "there are 2 billion mobile phones in the world but only 400 million bank accounts", and the like. This creates a lot of disconnect for someone who wants to use m-payments because they don't have or don't wish to use a bank account for making payments and discovers that they can't. 

Current reality seems to indicate that mobile payments is just another channel  - besides branch, ATM and Internet Banking - for initiating and monitoring conventional bank-based payments. I guess m-payments will be able to achieve its true potential only if and when it can truly break out of that niche and becomes a fully fledged, self-standing method of payment.