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The last line in the article is key.

At the moment, it looks like Visa, MasterCard et al do have a lot of practical choice.

At its prelaunch and inception, Bakkt, the crypoexchange owned by NYSE owner ICE, used GTM of replacing credit card transactions with cryptocurrencies. However, Bakkt probably realized that's a fool's errand and recently pivoted to a cryptowallet for loyalty, miles, rewards, etc. Whatever threat that Bakkt posed to disrupt V / MC is now gone.

Maybe it's only me but I vaguely recall digital receipt happening at least twice in the past 10-15 years.

TY @JeremyLight. 

The BankTransfer feature I was referring to in India works exactly in this new-HMRC way. On IT website, we select the bank, are taken automatically to the logon page of said bank's online banking portal, enter our NetBanking creds, see a form prefilled with all the details for the said payment, simply hit PAY button and come back to IT website and see the PAYMENT SUCCESSFUL message. Ditto other merchants enrolled for this method of payment. This is sorta like PULL mode. 

Since I didn't have to pay any additional Income Tax, I never experienced the payment part of the HMRC IT return process. From your comment, I take it that, as of now, only PUSH mode is supported i.e. from Bank to HMRC website. I'm quite aware of the payment failures and RECON problems inherent in that mode!

On a side note, a few years ago, there was talk about ENHANCED DATA, which would cut down the aforementioned RECON problem significantly. Any idea if this project has been implemented?

@JeremyLight: 

Article implies that tax payments can currently be made only with debit and credit cards."submit payments direct from their bank accounts, rather than through debit or credit card."

Whereas your comment implies that tax payments can already be made from bank accounts. "Since HMRC already accepts bank transfers from tax payers,".

Going by the vague memory I have with my HMRC tax return 10+ years ago, I tend to agree with you. 

While interbank A2A payments is a prime use case for Open Banking, tax payments from bank accounts is a very compelling use case. I find it hard to believe that there was no solution for it until the launch of OB. 

For context, in India, the functionality being ordered by HMRC now has been supported on the websites of Tax Departments, TELCOs, Utilities and many other category of Merchants for over 15 years - well before UPI entered the scene 4-5 years ago.

Yeah, we keep receiving calls in India from UK etc. from people with Scottish accent. Of late, this nuisance has scaled new heights. Our regulator regularly sends warning SMSs telling us not to call these costly numbers back if we see a missed call from them. Many of them are too dumb to know about the timezone difference between UK and India and keep calling at especially inconvenient hours.

LOL don't recall hearing about "without fully signing up" concept anywhere before:) .

On a side note, for the last 3-4 years, KYC is just a matter of Fingerprint (instore) or Mobile OTP (online) in India. Curious to know the difference between Basic KYC and Full KYC in Dozens's jurisdictions.

I know bank branches are generally open during the lockdown but wouldn't it be better for bank customers to avoid the branch as far as possible and switch to digital banking channels during a pandemic outbreak? Banking regulator is not health regulator but wouldn't it make more sense for everyone in the government,  banking regulator included, to advocate the switch to digital banking instead of going in the opposite direction??

By "all account holders", 

If you mean "all bank account holders", then surely no since it's a credit card feature.

If you mean "all credit card account holders", then also probably no since it's only a Visa Premier credit card feature.

I'd interpret the last sentence in the article to mean "it would be offered to all Visa Premier credit card customers for the said fee". 

@StavrosRaftopoulos + 1.

Visa Premier offers several benefits. 

https://banqo.fr/en/blog/top-8-benefits-visa-premier.html. 

For me, just the Travel Insurance is worth every bit of the €134 annual card fee. All other benefits are icing on the cake.

Fingerprint based contactless payments above usual limit is a very cool feature and well worth the extra €24 annual fee.

I recently got approved for Amazon's BNPL product called Amazon Pay Later without submitting any credit card / debit card / bank account details. There's no auto debit for installment repayments. 

Meanwhile, here's research data from Financial Brand that reinforces my personal experience with BNPL:

• 2/3rds of BNPL users who where late with their repayments said it was because they lost track of when the bill was due. So BNPL repayments don't have to be automatic. 
• BNPL customers do have a credit card and do wish to make BNPL repayments with credit card. Some credit card issuers (e.g. JPMC) allow it, some others (e.g. CapitalOne) don't.