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While this creates a giggle, isn't there a serious problem in the fact that this company feels that it is OK to fire people by email??!

I was of the same opinion until recently. Here in Belgium there is a mandate for banks to offer a BBA (Basic Bank Account) to anyone that wants one - unless they've been blacklisted. This means that only 6000 or so adults in Belgium don't have a bank account (National Bank figures). However, Belgium has one of the highest usages of cash versus electronic payments (over 80% cash). Belgium is one of the most advanced in deploying SEPA instruments and e-invoicing is readily available from most utility companies (via zoomit and others). So everything is in place to avoid the circumstances that you highlight but it still isn't working. Why? My best guess is one of the contributing factors is the tax system - and its role in the cash economy. Another factor is the high cost of card acceptance for merchants. And of course, the lack of solutions for temporary workers to receive non-cash salaries. Solutions to address these such as prepaid cards, mobile or alternate card acceptance and greater social awareness of the costs of cash to every citizen are all things that can be tackled by the banking sector and Government - but the real driver has to be a consumer pull rather than an sectoral push.

Having worked in the past to get banks to launch innovative solutions, I would agree to some degree with the sentiments that you express (particularly business case!). However, I think one of the greatest issues in retail banking innovation is protecting the integrity of banking systems and avoiding all but the lowest risk - which is sharply juxtaposed by the innovation and risk taking at the other end of the banking market. 

Rulebooks and standards are indeed a symptom of this lowest risk denominator approach to innovation, but are not the cause. Perhaps what banks should be doing is investing in innovative companies in order that they can capitalise on the technologies or business models once they are proven to be in the right risk profile. For example - when seeing potentially disruptive companies like Square popping up, banks should say 'I'll have a slice of that' and invest in it to see if the business model is viable. Once it is proven, the bank rolls it out but from the position of an investor instead of a customer. 

One of the first issues that companies such as Apple will need to overcome is the physical separation of markets within their own organisations. For example you can't currently send a gift in iTunes from a Belgian account to a French one - depsite the same currency. So even if they launch a single currency for iTunes (Apple pips?) it is still a national solution.

Virtual currencies have their merits and certainly work in single use or closed loop situations. However, the lack of control from a Government point of view (mostly taxation) means that as soon as they get to a certain size, the regulatory authorities will begin to find ways to limit them - examples Tencent QQ coins, PayPal in India.

I too have two mobile phones - both with web connections - yet have never considered making financial transactions using them because I simply don't trust them as secure devices. Anything that is connected can also be infested as far as I'm concerned - look at the idiots that tried to unlock their iPhones and in doing so switched off the security. Hmm credit card app for iPhone anyone?

The place that I still struggle, where NO-ONE has been able to put up a convincing argument, is as Joe suggests, just because 'everyone' has a mobile phone, why should they use it for banking? After all, 'everyone' has a finger don't they? Including all of the people that in Dean's eyes are too poor for the payments system to worry about.

What about keys, that's something I never leave home without, why not base banking on keys? After all, according to my lock manufacturer, they're security cut with a laser so that no-one can copy them and I've got at least seven levers. BMW took up this idea with their PayPass key, I think it'll catch on...wait, poor people can't afford BMWs...

Or how's about shoes - oh no, poor people can't afford them either.

Teeth? Damn, excludes old people.

Plain and simple, the card infrastructure is what it is because it suits the business that is going on. Mobile phones don't - in fact in order to implement a ubiquitous payments system based on them we'd have to wait at least another 20 years for the banks to rebuild their infrastructure. Think about how long the magstripe has been retained - and the Americans still think that's a pretty nifty idea...

Here in Belgium our local school has two choices. Firstly we have a direct debit mandate with them as the merchant, which allows them to warn us of impending costs like photos, lunches and the like, then take the money. Secondly, Belgium has a standard credit transfer form - if the money is to go direct to the photographer, they send us the credit transfer notice and we action it via internet banking at home. (see http://www.sepabelgium.be/files/Folder-sepa-2009-EN-Q_0.pdf)

FYI - I've seen a few articles appearing on the MasterCard Cash product in Asia - which is essentially pre-authorised debit or credit with a contactless interface and behaves as if it were a stored value card. Perhaps stored value will live on in this new guise as the tapping makes it much easier for consumers to use. (see slide 9 of this deck - http://www.multos.com/downloads/10-years/hitachia.pdf)

James is definitely right - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/5753477/Ryanair-to-make-passengers-stand.html

It won't be that long before the younger generation forget how to write with a pen anyway (don't do it much myself any more) and so cheques won't be usable - unless you can adapt your PoGo to print them directly from your mobile...

For the plumber it would be simple to fill in a Direct Debit mandate so that he/she could take it out of your account - with the guarantee to fall back on in case of fraudulent activity.

For the friend, a faster payments transfer is quicker and easier than credit transfers have ever been, failing which you could always use PayPal, Moneybookers, Google Checkout, QQ coins, Monilink, postal order, top-up their prepaid card. give them a gift card, or if you're really desperate give them cash.

There are so many in-market solutions to sending money electronically that the cheque really should have been killed off a long time ago.

It took me a while to work out what they're trying to achieve, but basically it seems to work a bit like the SMS notifications for transactions - and instead of outputting to your phone, it sends your line item detail to a pre-defined twitter account.

From a consumer POV it seems a bit like bragging - which really is soooo 2007... "Read my Twitter and see all the wonderful things that I'm buying." It's all a bit pre-crisis really.

However, as a mechanism it does have some really interesting potential so perhaps we'll see some new apps coming in the notifications sector in the near future. I've made my feelings known about SMS applications in the past and this seems to be the first way that web communications are being leveraged in an effective way to overcome the issues with SMS.

@ainsley has just bought an iphone

@ainsley has just bought a Sony 50inch LCD TV

@ainsley has just paid for a hotel room and champagne

@ainsley has just been burgled

@ainsley has to explain to his wife about the hotel room

@ainsley has to explain all of the above to the taxman

It's a neat idea and an innovative link between payments and social networking. I hope that this is a catalyst for something useful like linking it to the expenses accounts of MPs so that everything they submit is public:

@primeminister has expensed his stair carpet for constituency property