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@Derek, I agree. Remember in the early 2000s when there was a big push to out-source call centres and IVR because it was seen as better service and cheaper? Mixed success because when it boils down to it (no matter your age), sometimes you just want to speak to a person in your own language, which depending on the situation just might include being able to see the whites of their eyes. This didn't just happen in FISvcs, but other industries too (see my recent blog for a light-hearted example).

Its a numbers game, based on where a big player can net as much value as possible for the best penny spent. As the guys above have pointed out, the branch closure is not a huge impact on total branch and clearly well worth the message it sends that Digital is high on the priority order ("come to us Miss & Mstr Millenial").

Stanley, that's a great example. The fact the branch couldn't validate is exactly the type of challenge the banks face.

Consumers don't care about the omni-channel experience, that's jargon to most. What they need, expect and demand is that when they are dealing with the bank for key services (a card validate is a perfect example, given its necessity for the bank to make money from the consumer!) they expect to be able to interact with the bank in a way that is convenient to them, which may cover more than 1 channel to cover the plethora of consumer segments the bank serves. Your wife in essence had to learn the rules of the differences of the channels, resulting in a very badk customer experience. 

This just makes good sense. I agree with Tolga, knowing Lloyds this will indeed have taken some serious internal debate and strong CX leadership to overcome the change in risk mgt. Starting with Existing customers first may well have been the negotiating point so the process and system can be checked for holes before rolling out wider. Given the Account Switching service this development puts in place a process for fast turnaround. That just leaves the bank to work out how to get the customers to actually want to come to Lloyds. No small feat.

Interesting debate. Bo and others are not wrong, but there side step the elephant in the room. The key fact the banks have known for years; their legacy infrastructure, ownership model and support of it all is screwed now and getting worse. Bad press happening all the time due to payments failures. The cost burden alone is diverting their funds to maintenance tasks and away from Bus Dev leaving the gate open for more nimble market entrants, amidst a dagger filled room called "increased regulation". The cost to compete is way to high for them, the speed of change too slow. Their dinner is being taken away slowly but surely. Low hanging fruit initiatives always worthy for a quick injection of ROI, but fixing the enterprise architecture can only be applauded if they want to be relevant in 10 years too.

Excellent post Máté. The concept of risk management you outline has long been in place by card issuers and acquirers; its about accepting losses but working on ways to reduce those losses. Security is a given, a must. But to win in a competitive financial services environment you have to win on desirability. Customer experience is "must no. 1".  

Hi Ketharman I take your points on email address and the link to bad perception / bad practice. Good job it's early days I gueas and as Marcus notes above, best to catch now and improve ethos. I'm still eager to see what they launch with. Should be good to see and I'm hoping for something NOT JUST about the end of the shopping process (ie the payment bit :-).

This is interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing what MCX unveils. To show such preventative / competitive matters before an actual launch / promo must mean they have something special, right? Hopefully something that covers the shopping experience, and simply a '1 click payment' step. Something that gives value to consumers, attracting them to shop with a CurrentC merchant. That would be a proper showcase for mobile payments. Re the email address, I'm not sure how people having these really plays into the hands if fraudsters. Perhaps someone can enlighten me with how "losing" something arguably already in the public domain can result in fraud losses that would be great.

Lee - I don't think that's cynical, it's clinical :-). The 65k average is unlikely to be be the real average. Consider the usual adoption curve. This would have a big uptick to start with, dip, then gradually increase to eventually exceed the initial hit rate. Correlate that with the amount of consumers able to use on day 1 vs end if this year (more banks on board) vs sometime next year (even more banks on board) and you can see why today's results are encouraging. I agree, it would be nice to see stats such as velocity of use and average transaction sizes. Ooh, just imagine the data possibilities :-)

That's a lot. Factoring in a spike for novelty, a dip for the fact not all FIs are on board yet, this really does seem strong. My bank doesn't offer yet, but have heard some banks done a great job of making the journey simple, others have completely messed it up. As other other FIs come on board, and consumers become happier using their phones, the logical next question is "why can't I do this in a store?"

Of course, those bad journey offending banks will slow things down a tad. I guess PayM didn't mandate certain rules on how the journey should work. 

Million users is encouraging. Is spend £65m (heading) or £6.5m (article)?