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The cliche of people visiting bank branches to withdraw cash is largely outdated. On the contrary, cash deposit transactions of the following types seem to account for the bulk of queues in branches: (a) Cash deposit into accounts by individuals and SMBs with large cash businesses (b) Sending money home by migrant workers across different states within the country (c) Purchase of Demand Drafts.

It could be argued that technologies are available to move all these transactions to electronic channels. However, their adoption is hobbled by several issues: (i) Let's take the example of ATM Bunch Note Acceptor in the context of the aforementioned transaction (a). If it took a decade or two for people to get used to withdrawing money from an ATM, it shouldn't be surprising that it will take them at least as much time to deposit money into a machine. (ii) For security or whatever reason, electronic channels have upper limits of transaction value (e.g. Visa CardPay permits only INR 50K per day for credit card settlement), compelling branch visits for payments above this threshold. (iii) As I'd pointed out in My Bank Does Right To Scrap Cheque Deposit Systems, certain technologies are simply bad tradeoffs between cost reduction and customer convenience.

You could blame technology, technology providers, bankers' mindsets or regulators for the current state-of-affairs. But, under the circumstances, it's virtually impossible to move all mundane transactions to digital channels. IMHO, while their superior capabilities in the areas of relationships and customer complaint redressal are obvious, branches won't lose relevance even for handling low value, everyday transactions for the forseeable future.

A certain bank uses a realtime analytics app to identify disgruntled customers of its competitors based on their tweets. The bank's digital sales team then proactively targets this group of people with its differentiated offerings. Not surprisingly, such an analytics-based campaign yields far greater conversion compared to typical "spray-and-pray" campaigns used by most banks. We found this to be a great use of analytics to improve business performance. Besides, since the app is available on the cloud, no IT involvement is required.

Any idea why in-store comparison shopping - of the type enabled by a mobile app like RedLaser / equivalent - has been missed out?

Can you also throw more light on how a retailer can access the "customer’s data footprint" that "shows they are in the market for a new gadget", come to know about their purchase intent based on "browsing on their e-commerce site". As far as I know, extracting the visitor's name, email and other PII from website clickstream is illegal in most parts of the world, assuming that it's technically possible in the first place.

@AlexanderP:

Google Wallet already works fine on non-NFC smartphones for online payments (http://www.google.com/wallet/how-it-works/online.html). So, when you say, "they need to extend Google Wallet to non-NFC smartphones...", you're implicitly referring to in-store payments only, right?

I've heard that some browser settings block users from visiting web pages that include an iframe component. If this is true, I hope WePay has addressed it.

@AlexanderP:

Okay, thanks, I've read your "bleeds post" but this question remains: "More importantly, if Google earns interchange on Transaction 1, not sure why GW can't use a credit card in the Secure Element instead of a debit card?"

Wallaby Financial does claim to provide a way to route a transaction initiated on the POS using Card B to not just one Card A but many other cards viz. Card C, D, E...

At "21 cents + 0.05% of the transaction amount", total interchange fee on Transaction 1 for US$ 100 works out to 0.21 + 0.05*100/100 = 26 cents. If, as you say, "Google shares interchange fee with Citi", Google's earning from Transaction 1 is less than 26 cents. Not sure how you estimate this figure to be 50 cents. 

More importantly, if Google earns interchange on Transaction 1, not sure why GW can't use a credit card in the Secure Element instead of a debit card? After all, the merchant will bear the higher (2%) interchange.

Assuming that GW already permits consumers to add more than one card to their GW account, Google could offer to automatically route Transaction 2 type transactions to these different cards in such a way that the cardholder can maximize their rewards. Even if it can't find a way to charge for this service, Google could at least use it to boost the value proposition of GW to consumers. 

Maybe you've covered all this and more in your "bleeds" less post, but I can't access it - clicking the link simply takes me to my own Finextra Member Profile page!

"This contrasted with an earlier decision in Maine, where the presiding magistrate ruled that Ocean Bank was not responsible for the loss of around $345,000 from a business customer account following a similar cyber-attack."

This is no longer valid. As on 3 July 2012, the United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit, reversed the decision of the lower court. So, Ocean Bank has now been held responsible. For the bank, this is another example of "unintended consequences", as I'd pointed out here.

Like all first attempts, I'm sure yours will also face many challenges! Best wishes. I notice that LCs and Open Accounts are conspicuous by their absence. Keen on knowing if you'd treat them as part of some other category than SCF. 

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Network Access Control (NAC) are two technologies that protect a network from attacks from outside and inside the firewall respectively. By using network behavior anamoly detection (NBAD) and other sophisticated screening algorithms, they thwart zero-day attacks which escape AV-based endpoint protection solutions that rely solely on signatures. Although these technologies have been around for over 5-7 years, their adoption among banks and other industries has been somewhat lacklustre. For this, the blame might lie with vendors and customers alike: Vendors, because many of them go on a technology trip and don't deign to respond to obvious comparisons of their technologies with existing AV solutions. Customers, because it's politically advantageous for them to bury their heads in the sands and act as though they have never been hit by zero-day attacks and the like.