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A month ago, I predicted in response to this Finextra article that regulators could use Covid-19 crisis as the fall guy to defer / cancel SCA mandates. Good to see one regulator taking the cue.

Once upon a time, when banks gave loans for buying homes, homebuyers had to put up cash downpayment. Home prices went up, even downpayments became high. So came a time when banks started giving loans for downpayment as well.

I was jokingingly predicting the other day that, soon subscriptions will become so costly that banks will make a business out of giving loans for them!

Jokes apart, tech companies can afford the deferred payment model of subscriptions via VC funding. But, when it comes a refrigerator or car manufacturer, I doubt if they will qualify for VC funding. So, it's quite possible that they, rather than their consumers, will take bank loans to offer the subscription model. Effectively, a retail banking loan becomes a business banking loan. 

The comeback of bank branch is one of the least expected outcomes of the pandemic. I have been appealing to banks to improve the CX of digital banking so as to reduce traffic to branches. 

@Uri Rivner: If the backdoor measures proposed by you are completely friction-free, then I'm all for it. TY for the clarification. 

Great post. Equally applicable to FPS (UK), UPI (UK)  and all A2A RTPs in the world. The Finextra article entitled APP fraud losses hit £456 million in 2019 proposed additional steps to minimize fraud. As you can see from my comment below that article, I totally agree with you that adding more steps is not the solution and it will prove counterproductive. 

I notice you've proposed "backdoor" / invisible steps. IME, such steps lead to inconsistent UX and patchy performance. They ask for some info sometimes, not other times, thus disconcerting the user. They tend to be slow. That's why I proposed a non-tech solution. While you can read my full recommendation in aforementioned comment, here's a tl;dr version: Banks should reimburse victims once, train them how to use the app securely & refuse reimbursements if they fall for fraud again. Of course, that article's focus was APP fraud whereas your article's focus is account takeover fraud, so solutions will need to be tweaked accordingly. 

Not sure how the channel by which banking services are consumed has any relevance for the bank's forays into food and medicine retailing business but, just for the record, in my 15+ years of being a customer of this said bank, I have not visited its branch even once. I've used its banking services entirely via digital channels. 

What about Klarna, then? The Swedish lender has been doing virtually a carbon copy in EU of what BML was doing in the US. Memory serves, it's at least 10 years old and has been working without Open Banking. 

Nonbank Lenders like BillMeLater and Affirm (USA), ZestMoney and LazyPay (India) have been providing Instant Credit for 5-10 years without accessing bank accounts. While this post explains how Open Banking can be used by Lenders, I didn't find a compelling reason for why Open Banking is required by Lenders in the first place. 

With #RoachMotel and other dark patterns used by service providers snaring consumers into #SubscriptionTrap, there's no argument that there's a compelling need for Subscription Management. But I'm not sure if banks have a play here or even want to have a play here. 

To take my personal example, whenever I buy a subscription, I try to buy it from AppStore or PlayStore as far as possible because they support cancellation of a subscription anytime (even if the original service provider does not).

In the case of my WSJ subscription, I ordered the subscription directly from WSJ website without checking whether they were available on AppStore / PlayStore. Big mistake. I encountered the classic RoachMotel dark pattern and had a tough time cancelling it. 

Now, the thing is, I paid for this WSJ subscription via my credit card. If my bank really wanted to have a play in Subscription Management, it should let me cancel my WSJ card-on-file mandate by contacting it. I didn't try but it has been widely reported that banks do not accept cancelation requests or chargeback demands from consumers wanting to cancel or get refund for unauthorized subscriptions respectively. 

Banks make money only when the subscription continues to run. Ergo they have a vested interest in NOT letting the consumer cancel the subscription or in getting into subscription management in any other manner that would benefit Consumers. Of course, this does not apply to banks, if any, that value CX over Revenue and banks who have delusionary thoughts of being able to charge fees for providing Subscription Management. 

For years, I've appealed to banks to make digital banking more frictionless so that customers don't flock to branches. The need to avoid branch visits has acquired new meaning now. Hope banks take the opportunity to improve CX, either by themselves or via fintech partnership.

I see a white space for a fintech app to sit between the customer and the bank app and provide overlay features that reduce / eliminate friction involved in a lot of digital banking activities today e.g. KYC, Confirmation of Payee, etc. This will hopefully drive greater adoption of digital banking channels and automatically reduce branch visits, which is what all of us want post the pandemic crisis.