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@GerhardS: By "that technology is well proven, ... many years", if you're referring to Tandem and NonStopSQL, I always thought it got replaced - where it did - by PC technology for reasons of cost. I'm shocked to learn that PC technology was deemed faster than that!

Shunted around multiple websites to complete 2FA and risk failed payment when one of those websites is down; compelled to enter extremely abridged narrations for ePayments just because IT has restricted the field length to unrealistically small values; having to select a method of payment preset for a given beneficiary without first getting to see the list of beneficiaries - these are only a few examples of friction that lead to shopping cart abandonment in banking and financial transactions. These will not only cause customer frustration but will also drive customers away from digital channels back to the branch. Maybe this is why I've been queues at branches growing longer on the rare occasions that I've visited them lately.

Re. faulty processes preventing 1 in 2 customers from opening an account online, does this imply that 50% of visitors to a bank's website do successfully open an account online? That's an unbelievably high conversion rate considering Amazon and other leading ecommerce companies convert less than 10% of their visitors to customers. If you can cite the name of the Javelin report from where you've taken this figure, I'd like to learn more about this.

@PaulS:

TY for your feedback.

By "metering" both type and quantity of usage, SaaS obviously prevents waste by consumers. Since vendors struggle with frontended costs and backended revenues under the SaaS model, they simply can't afford waste.

I partially agree with your bottomline view. In the case of onpremise software, most of wasted functionality can be treated as such only after the fact, so I'm not sure how practical it is to avoid waste upfront before development. I admit that this is true only for custom-developed onpremise software. With product software, it could be different: Some implementors succeed in preventing wasteful functionality by urging customers to go live on the base product and take up change requests for extensions and customizations only 60-90 days after the software has been put to use.

"Combined credit and debit card swipe fees tripled over the past decade to about $50 billion a year - driving up prices an estimated $427 for the average household..."

And, in the one year since the Fed capped debit card fee last year, can NRF enlighten us about how much its members have enabled the average household to save by reducing sticker prices?

After doing a stellar job with FPS at the industry- and individual-bank-level in the UK, I'm sure VocaLink and Accenture will get many "buddy hugs" in Australia as well. Best wishes!

Can you throw more light on how chip-and-PIN and biometrics cards can counter CNP fraud?

Props for covering a crucial, yet oft-ignored, topic like "false positives". In the aftermath of the GFC, there was a clamor for more comprehensive risk management systems. They ignored the fact that even the existing systems provided enough alarms. It was just that there were so many false positives that they had to be bypassed, especially when taking them seriously would have meant reduced bonuses. Likewise, every time news about yet another incident of online fraud breaks out, we'll hear security gurus advocating yet another layer of authentication, ignoring the possibility that the resultant increase in friction and false positives could block as many genuine transactions as prevent fraudulent ones. 

I'm reminded of the old quote, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don't know which half". A century later, most CEOs and CFOs would still agree with this saying. Unlike advertising and marketing, software development is lot more dependent upon internal and controllable factors. Nevertheless, it's still not so easy to predict which feature will or won't be used in advance. IMHO, a real change in status quo will only come from a different business model rather than by tweaking SDLC methodologies. As I'd said in my personal blog post SaaS Will Change The Outcome Of The Bloatware Versus Light Apps Debate, bloatware will automatically come down with SaaS.

I always thought SQUARE's primary target audience was a certain category of merchants whose risk profile was judged to be too high to qualify for merchant accounts from traditional acquirer banks. Therefore, when this payments market went to banks, it found the gates of banks barred. Not sure what's the payments market that FiServe helps banks to "gatecrash".

Kudos to ICICI Bank for pushing the envelope on technology beyond what I'd written here and here. Having said that, I was a bit disappointed to learn that it has shut down its FB-based customer service within a couple of months of launching it. Its FB page announces this move by simply saying, "Please do not post any customer service requests on this page", but doesn't provide any reason for this decision. Personally, I'd hold the NSFW language used by many people - who may or may not even be customers of ICICI Bank - on the bank's FB page to be chiefly responsible for this aborted initiative.