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Since debit and credit cards are kept alongside cash in the same wallet, I'm sure they'd be found to contain the same dirt and bacteria. But, that's a survey I'd only expect a mobile wallet provider to conduct. 

Actually, the situation is not as bad as it is portrayed: Rarely does a broker-dealer actually rekey data from internal dealer systems to venues. Many broker-dealers use scripts to automate this process, just that, in the absence of a standard across venues, they need one script per venue and each broker-dealer needs its own set of scripts that can't be used by another broker-dealer. What a standard can achieve is reduction in the number of such scripts, which is a good thing. A similar situation exists in the Corporate-to-Bank interface where payment messages generated by a corporate's AP / TMS / ERP system have to "massaged" before being submitted to the systems of its different banking partners. Not sure how successful SWIFT and ERP vendors have been with their unified C2B solutions that attempt to solve this problem.

Data comes with privacy, opt-in / opt-out and many other caveats and, as of now, its monetizability is far from proven. Even if Apple / Google found a way of making money from data, why should that threaten banks? It's not as though they were making money on data before and are going to lose that revenue stream to Apple / Google in future. As long as banks earn interchange - which is something that Apple / Google can't take away from them unless they enter banking themselves - banks should be happy. I'll have the last laugh when Mobile RDC - something that banks introduced - is recognized as the coolest thing going in mobile financial services :)

Yes, it clarifies. Thanks.

All the billions of end user data that is held on file by Apple and Google pertain to cards issued by banks. If I were a bank, why should I be bothered whether my customer uses plastic or mobile app to pay for a purchase? Either way, I'd earn interchange on the transaction. I might actually prefer the mobile wallet option since I can get to levy the higher CNP interchange rate even for a CP transaction.

Given that markets value tech higher than the banking sector - barring a few exceptions - I don't see how Apple / Google will justify a move to enter banking to their shareholders at the risk of diluting their valuation. But, suppose they do and launch a bank. Let's not forget that the billions of cards they have on file are not their own cards. Even by becoming banks, they won't earn any interchange on purchases made with those cards. To overcome this, let's assume that both companies go on a drive to issue their own cards to the billion members of iTunes / Play Stores. Now, let's remember that they're no longer cool tech companies but "yet another bank" that's trying to pitch its card to me. While I'm not sure how long it would take them to acquire billion card customers, I'm very sure that banks would be able to launch a cool mobile phone / tablet / some-other-device in the same time and threaten to take away the tech market from these two companies. If the last statement sounds ridiculous, it's no less or more so than the proposition that tech companies will launch banks.

In a nutshell, if I were a bank, I'd have no reason to be worried if Apple or Google got into mobile wallets, with or without their own banks.

Interesting figures. Thanks for sharing. Taking off from your last line, though, I'd have thought that the growing trend of colocation during the same period would've had the opposite effect on bandwidth. After all, if a bank's trading servers were placed on the exchange's LAN to cater to HFT / low latency trading, it shouldn't need as much WAN bandwidth between its premises and that of the exchange as it did in the pre-colocation era. Maybe your figures have already factored that but I was just wondering...

No one can force the merchant or the consumer to adopt a new method of payment, especially when they together don't want to! Comfort and trust are merely table stakes for a new MOP, which will find mainstream adoption only if enough merchants / consumers receive a compelling reason to make the switch to it. On that count, the outlook for the new horde of PSPs for physical payments is bleak. There "ain't nothing broken" with cash and cards at the POS - at least nothing that can be fixed by the new MOPs - so I'd reserve my sympathy for the new PSPs, not merchants or consumers.

When it comes to remote payments - online or mobile - the situation is somewhat different. Factors like 2FA-caused friction are definite pain areas for merchants and consumers. PSPs that alleviate these pain points can find favor with consumers and eventually achieve mainstream adoption for their new MOPs.

While I haven't kept count, I think the latest tally in verdicts on these lawsuits is 3:2 in favor of banks. On another note, with just 5 lawsuits in the 20 months since I wrote this post, ACH and EFT frauds certainly appear to be one-off cases and not a tsunami.

In this latest verdict, the court has found in favor of the bank, citing that the corporate declined the bank's offer of 2FA (two factor authentication) and 2PA (two person authorization) and must therefore take responsibility for the loss of US$ 440K caused by the fraudulent wire transfer from its account. While I haven't kept count, I think the latest tally in verdicts on these lawsuits is 3:2 in favor of banks. 

On another note, with just 5 lawsuits in 20 months since I wrote this post, ACH and EFT frauds certainly appear to be one-off cases and not a tsunami.

As I'd highlighted in this post two years ago, MyBank is similar to iDEAL (The Netherlands), BillDesk (India) and many SVP providers in the USA. As I'd pointed out at the time, "...myBank trumps all incumbent providers ... in its awesome geographical reach and inherent ability to foster trust among consumers." I'm somewhat disappointed that it has taken so long for MyBank to achieve this level of adoption. Time to market doesn't appear to be high on the list of priorities for EBA Clearing.