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Well done Santander!

Does anyone really think Visa & Mastercard will just reduce the interchange fees. Unlikely, scheme fees and/or some new dreamed up fees will no doubt increase to at least make up the loss and status quo will be resumed. But of course the EU will still claim victory, Visa and Mastercard will claim they complied and the press might run articles about how shoppers should be paying less. It will be a PR victory for the EU only. But is keeping things the same so bad? If we really want competition in payments then why would any newcomers challenge the two scheme's dominant position for such low margins. They would find it harder to get retailer adoption if their costs were higher for the new method. So if the EU does achieve a straight reduction, will it have actually reduced or eliminate any competition and perversely strengthen Visa and Mastercard's stranglehold on the retail payments business?

The banks do not need large branch networks now they have joined with the Post Office for basic counter services.

Whilst you mention the Post Office 'piggybacking' in WHSmiths, what you have not mentioned is the majority of UK banks have enabled their customers to use the whole of the Post a Office network for simple transactional services (see: http://www.postoffice.co.uk/branch-banking-services#withdrawals_&_deposits). With 93% of the total population (and 99% of those living in towns and cities) living within one mile of a post office the customer convenience already exists nationwide.

Fantastic news for SME's.  Finally a provider they all know, trust and use regularly.

There is in fact a feature within Faster Payments that would greatly reduce the number of misplaced bill payments whereby the receiving company could sit in on the transaction flow and accept or reject the payment. This way if the customer omitted or miss-keyed the reference data required the receiving company could reject the payment and therefore not have the manual effort and bad customer experience of chasing up bad debt that has in fact been paid. The other added benefit is the receiving company would get real-time information on customers paying them.

I've been a Barclays on-line bank user for many years and think their 2-factor system is excellent.  I have far too many passwords to remember and on-line banking is the one you really do not want to be the same as all the others.  Barclays clearly did listen to their customers as I only have to authenticate again for a new payment and not one that has been set-up previously.

Just look at The Netherlands - it's worked fine for them for much longer and they do not have the same level of phishing issues we have.  The sooner the banks roll this out to everyone the better (and the phishers can stop spamming the UK and focus on the next weakest country).

Also, if/when the UK banks launch a new payment system like iDEAL, giropay, SVP, etc they will need this level of authentication to secure the transaction.