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TY for your reply @Chris Holmes.

iPhone has ~20% share of global smartphone installed base. Apple Pay works only on ~50% of the global installed base of iPhone. It requires contactless POS, which has perhaps ~25% share of global installed base of POS terminals. Apple Pay has not even been launched in India, where PayTM mobile wallet has an installed base of 300M users. In China, Apple Pay is nowhere near AliPay and WePay.

Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that Apple Pay is showing signs of going mainstream within the iPhone installed base, it's a long, long way from going mainstream as a retail payment method.

Why 2004 & Apple Pay? Pay By Touch launched biometric payments at Inshop / Point of Sale in the USA back in circa 2000. It flopped miserably.

An update re. India's Aadhaar Pay: Supreme Court recently outlawed the use of Aadhaar Biometric ID by fintechs, banks, TELCOs, et al. So, the fate of Aadhaar Pay now hangs in balance.

Biometric Payment has been threatening to go mainstream next year for the last 20 years. Hope it finally does that next year since we're tired of hearing this prediction for so many years.

Consumers rightfully feel cheated by stealth price increases when they exhibit loyalty by making renewals with the same company. OTOH, companies invest in loyalty programs with one key goal, namely, increase ticket size per member-consumer. One of the ways by which this goal is fulfilled is by making stealth price increases for renewals. This is indeed a major conundrum. Short of regulation, I don't know how it can be eliminated. But, I also don't know how regulation can be framed, keeping in mind free market principles.

While the article is silent on this point, T-Mobile GoPoint website seems to suggest this offering is only for USA. AFAIK, credit interchange is not subject to any cap in USA and hovers around 2-3%. So 2.75% flat fees charged by GoPoint is not too bad. That said, 2.75% is too high for debit cards, on which, I think, max interchange is 22 cents / transaction post Frank-Dodd-Durbin Amendment.

Are debit cards on business accounts eligible? Or only those linked to personal accounts?

The things that Erica does well v. does not do well seem to tally with my predictions of where Chatbots Can Replace Humans.

Even taking the date as 2015, I'm surprised it took so long for SWIFT alternatives to crop up. On a side note, IME, crypto *used* to be a threat to SWIFT but that threat is fast disappearing, largely because crypto companies are finding it increasingly difficult to open bank accounts in many countries (e.g. China, India), which contribute a good chunk of global cross-border money flows. 10 years ago, my US-based customers had two alternatives for making payments to my company in India: PayPal and Bank SWIFT Transfer. A couple of years ago, a couple of crypto companies approached me, saying they can offer another alternative. A few months later, they withdrew, citing inability to open bank accounts in India. I know there are many alternatives for P2P cross-border payments, but, 10 years later, we're left with exactly the same two alternatives for B2B payments in the USA-India corridor: PayPal and Bank SWIFT Transfer. I doubt if the situation is very different in the other major cross-border corridors (for, repeat, B2B, payments). 

...but that doesn't stop advertisers from trying, even in the UK. In circa 2008, I was walking in the corridors of Canary Wharf. When I neared the branch of a bank situated below its global HQ, I got a message on my mobile phone urging me to pop into the branch to open an account (or something to that effect). At the time, I didn't have a smartphone, so all this happened on a feature phone. 

Sad but this kind of thing happens all the time. I expect it to reduce after Brexit. Which is one of the Upsides Of Brexit For IT Industry.

Re. "Without a bank account, one needs to create alternate storage of funds with a unique identity for the customer.", who will provide deposit insurance for the alternate store of funds? I doubt if people will keep their money in an uninsured account at a VC-funded company that can shut down anytime, leaving them high and dry.