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@David Coghlan:

When you say "winning", you probably mean winning with customers. IMO, today's world of VC and ICO funding has upended that notion.

Winning means first succeeding in raising funds to blow on customer acquisition and only then on succeding with customers.

So, the winning platform will be the one that raises enough funds and makes liberal pay outs to customers for accessing their data. The Blockchain dApps I mentioned in my post have "won" in their regard. Take Brave / BAT for example. If viewed as a regular business, I doubt if it'd last a single day. In the days of VC funding, it'd have taken a few months to raise funds. Whereas, in the ICO world of today, it raised $35M in under 30 seconds (Source).

Ergo, that may be the route to success for Open Banking TPPs as well.

I don't think bank customers are confused.

It's banks and fintechs who are facing the consequences of their misplaced belief that people will spend as much time on banking as on other activities like news, shopping and entertainment. Compared to the other activities, banking is a chore. And, apart from Alexa Banking, all existing channels miss that point.

Bank customers will use just as much banking as they need to, which, IMO, is not much compared to other everyday activities. Just because there are 5-6 banking channels today compared to 2 channels back in the day doesn't mean the amount of banking activities will go up 3X. That's why we're seeing a stagnation of usage of all channels in developed markets like UK.

PS: The above is not true for developing markets. For reasons pointed out in my post Why Branch And Digital Channels Will Coexist Forever, banks are seeing an increase in usage volumes in all channels in India.

Nice post in itself but I couldn't find the answer to the question posed in its title. On the one hand, consumers hate irrelevant spammy offers. On the other hand, when they get extremely targeted offers, they find them creepy / an intrusion into privacy. This is a big dilemma facing retailers - and other businesses including banks - and I haven't come across a scaleable resolution for it so far. Maybe I misunderstood the title but I thought this post would provide that resolution.

To a common man, as long as they start on HSBC, it hardly matters whether they enter their banking credentials on HSBC or on respective bank website - they only know that HSBC was "looking over their shoulders" when they entered the creds. End of the day, leap of faith lies in letting a third party access their banking data. Whether that happens via screen scraping or API is a minor detail for the common man. With due respect to their knowledge, I wonder what %age of common men even know what these two terms mean, let alone the difference between them. Which is why I believe Open Banking Needs A Blockchain Boost to gain mainstream adoption.

For years, I've observed the following FI Innovation Playbook: Don't drink the Kool-Aid of every shiny new technology; Wait & watch for fintech winners; Buy / make only what works. We saw it earlier in Prepaid Card with eCount, in Gift Card, with Revolution Money; and most recently, in Mobile Wallet, with Zelle. We're seeing it again in this potential deal between CYBG and Virgin Money.

This playbook works very well. Direct-to-Consumer Fintechs chant the disruption mantra only to raise VC funds at frothy valuations. The moment they get an opportunity to flip their companies, they sell out to traditional banks - and out goes all their song and dance about taking care of consumers' interest yada yada yada.  

Consumers may be justified in wanting traditional banks to up their game but they're naive to expect it to happen via this neobank / challenger bank movement.

Hey @FinextraMember:

Is that an extremely cynical worldview or a subtle shill for card schemes?

Like I said earlier, airlines outside Europe have been receiving payments via bank transfer for ages and the sky hasn't fallen (sorry to mix my metaphor). While European airlines have a lot of scope for improvement in CX, IMO they're no greater or lesser crooks than airlines anywhere in the ROW.

@Robin Setty :

I'll tell you how COD worked:

You book the ticket online. You don't receive any eTicket. A delivery boy - always a boy - comes home after 1-2 days. You pay him by Cash or Card on Delivery. Five minutes later, you get an email with the eTicket. Transaction over.

To me, this mode of payment comes closest to "Cash on Delivery of Delivery Boy" rather than Cash on Delivery of Ticket or of Passenger but I'll accept whatever you decide:)

#DigressionAlert: I don't know why but your question reminds me of 3M's ingenious "lifetime warranty". Back in the day when floppy diskettes were a thing, 3M used to sell floppy diskettes under the brand name IMATION. Its USP was that it came with a “lifetime warranty”. Everyone assumed it was lifetime of the customer. When a floppy became defective, most customers would just chuck it. But there was always this one-odd customer who would approach 3M with a warranty claim. It was only then they learned that “lifetime” meant the lifetime of the diskette! Since the diskette was defective, its lifetime was deemed to have ended. Ergo the warranty had expired. Quite often, this happened within the first year of purchase of the diskette. So, effectively, 3M’s so-called lifetime warranty actually provided a shorter cover than its competitors' standard one-year warranty!

For as long as I can remember, airlines in India have accepted payments via bank transfer apart from debit / credit card for online ticket booking. Not sure if they still do but, for a while, they even dabbled with Cash on Delivery! I also checked an American airline, it also accepts many modes of payment apart from debit / credit card including Instant Bank Transfer. 

I guess this is news only for European airlines.

That's the most obvious explanation but branch staff is not the epitome of sophistication, either:)

How Banks Can Increase In-Branch Sales

@Adrian Black:

TY for your comment. I see a lot of diversity - even just on Finextra - in commentary about Open Banking access method. Some people seem to suggest that it's tantamount to giving away the keys to the kingdom (See https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=14986 and comments). Whereas some others say it's tightly controlled. Then I've also heard that its specs are not even out yet and are due to be published only next year!

As a fellow financial services tech professional, I may agree with you that tokenized access is a security improvement over screen scraping. But, as a bank customer, all I know is, if I give consent, someone other than me will be able to get into my bank account. I may still give consent provided I find strong enough value proposition, which I now think can only come out with actual monetary compensation.