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During the last 10 years or so, we've heard a lot of buzz around shopper-side technologies like Showrooming and Scan & Go. But they have somehow failed to go mainstream. It's as though people who are ready to use tech while shopping would rather buy online from home / work instead of making the trip to a brick-and-mortar store. 

With the change of guard at the helm of Amazon, there are reports that Amazon is planning to drastically scale back its brick-and-mortar store network in general and cashierless Go stores in particular, in USA.  

But, of course, UK is a different retail market. I see the need for an app as a major friction hotspot. That said, if it's an addon to the existing Amazon Shopping app - à la Amazon Pay - instead of being a separate app, then many shoppers are likely to already have it already. In that case, the friction is substantially alleviated and Amazon Fresh "Just Walk Out" should have a good run. Let's wait and watch...

Per Apple's announcement, Tap to Pay appears to be a new POS form factor rather than a new Method of Payment. I see numerous references in the article to credit card and card networks and zero references to Alternative Payment Methods. While the announcement does make a mention of Apple Pay and Electronic Wallets, the go-to funding source for both is credit card / debit card.  

Pray tell why you think Tap to Pay provides "a real alternative to credit and debit card payments."?

As for your observation "for the first time", I find it even more inscrutable because PayByBank, PayM, Zapp are at least three products that I can readily recall that have supported APMs like A2A in UK during the last 10 years - just that they failed to answer the question "what's in it for consumers to switch to them from credit card?" and failed to go mainstream.

“Open Banking has been a major success in the UK". 

LOL all that starts with a delusion always ends well.

For years, we've been hearing that Open Banking can be this, Open Banking can be that but I can't think of a single startup that has actually done this or that, has even 5M users, or become a unicorn in UK / EU.  

Contrast that with USA, India, China, etc. where there is no regulatory mandate for Open Finance, still dozens of startups together have nearly a billion users and have become unicorns, even decacorns or centicorns.

As a bystander, it's easy to agree with CEO of Starling Bank that EU Open Banking is a flop.

10+ years after Fintechs entered the fray threatening to kill banks, I don't know of a single big bank that has dies in USA. On the contrary, big banks celebrated their most profitable year in history last year. 

So, when I read about the "banks should be scared $hitless of fintechs" remark, I was a bit puzzled. Being in the IT industry, I'm more than delighted when a customer ramps up its tech budget but, on this specific instance, the use of fintech as bogeyman to hike IT spend didn't make too much sense.

More than the where and when, I'll be closely watching JPMC's response to shareholders' demand on greater transparency into the "why" of the record IT spend. 

Okay, thank you.

Are you suggesting that RLN will not even fail a couple of times a year amidst standard power and server connectivity challenges?

Nice to hear about Parametric Weather Insurance and the participation in this coalition of Etherisc, a company I covered in Atlas Etherisc - Another New Kid On The Blockchain a couple of years ago. Not sure why this is a no-profit-no-loss product, though.  

On a side note, AXA, the other insurer I covered in AXA Fizzy - The New Kid On The Blockchain has shut down its blockchain-based flight delay insurance product and has begun offering parametric weather insurance.

A2A method of payments have been around for 10+ years. Contrary to what I predicted in Why I Think EBA Clearing's myBank Will Be A Hit well before Open Banking was a thing, not one of them has moved the needle on credit card / debit card volumes during this period. That's because they failed to answer the fundamental question "What's in it for the Payor?". 

I'm sorry but I don't buy that the average ecommerce credit card transaction entails typing card #, billing address, etc. By now, most online shoppers buy from a select bunch of ecommerce merchants - say Amazon - where they have their Credit Card on File and checkout without entering a single keystroke or at most a 3 character CVV.

With that out of the way, I fail to see a single benefit for a Payor in using an A2A MOP. Why would anyone switch from credit card to an A2A MOP and forfeit rewards, deferred payment, fraud protection and other benefits that they enjoy only with credit card?    

I've lost count of the number of times I've asked this question on these various pages but unless OB A2As come up with a convincing answer for it, I'm afraid they will go the same way as non-OB A2As that never did: Fold up or become a niche P2P payment method with volumes that are two to three orders of magnitude lower than that of card payments. (And let me not even bring up APP Scam, the big elephant in the A2A room.)

Of course, the situation is drastically different in a country like India, where credit card and POS penetration are very low, which makes it a fertile ground for A2A. Our UPI MOP has become the largest A2A RTP in the world by volumes within 5 years of launch.

Keen to know how multiple is "multiple occasions where I have come to pay and the POS terminal has had other ideas and, for reasons unknown, my payment wouldn’t complete"?

Even when we need to enter PIN in India - i.e. have one more moving part compared to USA where PIN is not a thing - I don't recall the last time that my instore credit card payment failed. At least it hasn't happened in the last five years.

Since I can't spot a single mention of credit card in the article, I'm guessing that debt in the present contextt would default to personal loan, consumer loan or mortgage. Curious about how VISA sets rules for such credit products?