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It all depends on how cloud is defined.

In its purest form, a CBS vendor has a single, multi-tenanted platform on AWS / Azure and multiple banks access the same software demarcated by, say, subdomains e.g. citi.flexcube.com, jpmc.flexcube.com, barclays.flexcube.com (Couldn't resist the shameless plug for my ex-employer's CBS!). I doubt if there's a single example of that kind of CBS software among large banks.

Now, if we dilute the definition of cloud to shared infra etc., many savings banks, credit unions et al have been using cloud-CBS. In fact, many of them never had any other form of CBS. So, there's no question of moving to the cloud.

Far from being a hurdle to cloud, it could be argued that mainframe-CBS is the most prominent form of cloud-CBS of all times! Dumb terminals, no local storage of data or programs, etc.

@RalfOhlhausen:

TY for your reply. If I've understood this correctly, based on a onetime authorization given by the customer, a PISP can log in multiple times to the customer's bank account and initiate multiple payments on behalf of the customer without any customer intervention for each payment. I agree MyBank, iDEAL et al don't do this. But why is screen scraping required? Won't API / token / equivalent suffice for doing this? Hasn't PayPal been doing this already without screen scraping? (To be clear, I'm referring to the mode in which PayPal pulls funds from a bank account, not credit / debit card).

In 30 years of using multiple payment cards, I've never once felt the need to switch cards ex post facto. So, it's nice to know that the ability to do so is a "common payments problem". But, then, I don't think "leave wallet at home" is a birthright either! 

@RalfOhlhausen:

Re. your comment addressed to @Charmaine, wasn't EBA Clearing's myBank meant to provide the kind of risk-free payment that PISPs are now supposed to provide? When I heard about plans for its launch in 2011, I predicted that it would be a big hit (https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=5453). But I haven't heard much about it since then. 

Last year, I noted "Maybe it's only me but almost every article I've read on "IoT for Banking" so far seems convoluted." With the passage of time, I've become wiser and am now convinced that some IoT use cases for BFSI are downright counterproductive.

Let's take the oft-quoted one about how Insurers can use OBD / Telemetry / IoT / Dongle to monitor driving behavior. An early adopter actually piloted this technology last year in India. One of its customers happens to be a friend of mine who owns a BMW 5 series car for which the premium was INR 95K. During the course of the year, he changed his chauffeur. His new chauffeur drove the car rashly for a couple of months before my friend fired him. Technology worked perfectly and delivered great insights into driving behavior. When it came time for policy renewal, the insurer had correctly gauged that the risk profile had increased and bumped up the renewal premium to INR 105K. Did my friend thank the insurance company for its fantastic work and decide to engage more deeply with it? Nope. He simply switched to another insurance provider who offered a new policy at the same old premium. He was not the only one. The insurer terminated the pilot. Forget about lack of ROI, here was a classic case of negative returns.

On a side note, any device that can be fitted with a SIM card can communicate with the Internet. This has been possible for at least 15 years in my knowledge. So, sorry if my experience doesn't resonate with your opening line "Until recently, only devices such as computers, tablets and phones were able to connect to the internet."  Singapore successfully implemented toll for automobiles using net-connected gantries on roads 15 years ago. Germany tried a similar technology for commercial vehicles tolling but abandoned it.

Clearly, IoT is not a supply-side issue. Like many other technologies, the key to mainstream adoption of IoT is finding a compelling set of usage scenarios on the demand side that deliver business benefits to the guy who's paying for it.

Shareholders in Monitise must be wondering how come the Amazons and the Ubers keep making losses yet their valuations keep ballooning whereas Monitise does the same but its valuation nosedives from £2B* to £70M.

*: While this article mentions Monitise's peak valuation as £1B, a previous article (https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/30685/fiserv-to-acquire-monitise-for-70-million) had reported the higher figure of £2B.

Not sure what impetus was provided by demonetization to shun bank branches. Actually, demonetization perhaps made an entire generation of Indians visit the branch for the first ever time - to withdraw cash from tellers when ATMs went "cashless". Besides, demonetization itself is a bit of misnomer: It took out of circulation two old denomination notes (500, 1000) and replaced them at the time with two new new denomination notes (500, 2000) and last week we heard announcements of the introduction of one more new denomination note (200). With due respect to the sponsor of this survey and my ex-employer - Oracle - this survey has got a few basic premises wrong. Maybe it'll be able to grasp the real reasons for the prevailing channel mix by reading my blog post Why Branch And Digital Channels Will Coexist Forever

@MelvinHaskins:

TY for your reply. I can easily believe that the ATMs of that era were standalone. Decades later, in 2000 in Germany, my bank's ATM was (partially) standalone. If I had EUR 1000 in my account and withdrew EUR 100 from the ATM, the ATM would continue to reflect a balance of EUR 1000 until midnight. I say "partially" because the ATM would let me withdraw only up to EUR 900 with immediate effect. To get my updated balance of EUR 900, I'd have to insert my debit-cum-ATM card into a machine located inside the ATM center, which would print all transactions that happened after my last printout of the statement.

There's still hope for the PFM. As long as it fulfills my wish list http://lnr.li/Q6npt.

@MelvinHaskins: You must write about your experience with the world's first ATM - along with a picture of those 10 pound cheques, if possible:) Every time someone says banks are not innovative, I cite ATM - and credit card - as counter-examples.