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Indeed this is great news from Zapp.  My only concern is that it seems that everything about Zapp is moving at a glacial pace.  I get the feeling that the banks are not putting the kind of effort in that you would expect.  If we are keen to see an alternate "debit" scheme to reduce the influence of the Visa/MasterCard brands in that space, banks need to get a move on.  

I know of course that the acceptane footprint that the incumbants have built are hard to beat, but you'd think that this would encourage the banks and Zapp to get this out there and active as soon as possible.  

I have to agree with @Brett King, I am an HSBC customer and have been for 7 years now. I have also been involved in digital banking initiatives for some time now too and I honestly hate the HSBC mobile experience.  It reminds me of a corportate web service from 10 years ago when the design and experience mattered nothing.  

I want to use it more but can't and will be moving my account in the very near future.

Another point to consider if you take payment on the phone, you turn a card present transaction into a card not present transaction. Increasing costs and risks associated with the transaction. To Nick's point about walking out without paying, a valid risk, there is regal risks that they sell someone something they ought not to buy, knives to under 18's, booze to teens etc. If you meant paying with NFC, the current CIO has been heard to say that on his watch Sainsbury's will not support it. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

In my view it is horses for courses, and HTML5 will not always be the right answer to the problems you are trying to solve.  

The promise of write once, run everywhere is not there yet too, so you have the burden of testing on multiple platforms anyway.  

If you are also worried about security and data leakage like most people in the industries represented on Finextra ought to be, HTML5 does not give you the security and data protection that you would want.  

I agree with the idea that you should have a very clear concept of what you intend to achieve with your mobile applications and then chose the most pragmatic way forward.  

Like an old boss used to say, just becasue you can doesn't mean you should.