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@Michael J: 

Thank you for the clarification. It's clear why unclaimed payments would call for suspense account, regardless of whether they are sent to registered or unregistered mobile #s. But, unclaimed payments are not "incorrect transactions", nor do they involve customers who have "entered the wrong details", which is the context of this article and my comment. I still remain clueless about the need for suspense account in this context. 

If sender / receiver have to enter complex details like bank account # and sort code to initiate a payment, I can understand how mistakes could creep in and why a suspense account is needed. However, going by the popular stereotype, the typical user of MTN's mobile money transfer service is likely to be unbanked and would simply have to enter the beneficiary's mobile phone # to transfer funds. In that case, I can't understand how there could be mistakes in payments and why a suspense account is required in the first place. 

Just because petrol from BP, Shell, Aral and other petroleum companies is more or less the same as one another, I won't expect them to be given away for free. Likewise, basic banking service - boring or not - doesn't have to be free. Differentiated features command premium but are not required to justify a basic fee. That banks have kept them free reflects a legacy problem: Having started off by giving away toasters and other gifts for opening checking accounts, it's too much of a stretch for them to think of levying fees for such basic banking products. That explains why most of them give away traditional, but costlier, 'products' like branch, cheques and cash for free but are able to charge fees for newer, but cheaper, 'products' like EFT, debit and credit cards. On the other hand, banks have a solution about which they smartly maintain a low profile: It's called Net Interest Margin.

Hi Srinivas C: 

Nice to see you on Finextra!

Far as I know, there are at least two key differences: (1) IMPS requires the sender and receiver to be pre-registered with IMPS and obtain a certain MMID # before the payment can be initiated (2) IMPS payments can only be sent to the beneficiary's MMID #, not email address or mobile phone #.

Whereas, in the case of clearXchange, PopMoney, ZashPay and PingIt, only the sender has to be pre-registered with the respective service before the payment can be initiated. Sender simply sends money to the beneficiary's email or mobile phone #. Beneficiary needs to register with the service only upon hearing that, by doing so, they can collect some money. This is similar to the manner in which Hotmail and PayPal became viral when they launched more than 10-15 years ago. 

While these differences might sound technically minor, PayPal, PopMoney et al have designed their service to resonate far better with typical consumer behavior and have been rewarded with significant mainstream adoption. Whereas, I won't be surprised if IMPS heads the way of Nokia Money, whose design suffered from the same friction as IMPS' does.

You've a problem with a certain transaction. You try Phone Banking and can't get the CSR to understand your problem. You then try to log a complaint on Internet Banking but fail to find your problem listed on the dropdown boxes from which you must select one entry. You then send an email (assuming your bank allows you to log complaints in this manner) but, beyond the AutoResponse Message, you don't hear back from the bank. You try social media. You might be lucky and get your problem resolved there. However, it's more likely that the bank will ask you to report your problem on its website or via email. So, you're back to Square One. You finally decide to ditch all remote channels, make a trip to the branch and howl at the branch manager. Problem solved.

Surely, you never looked forward to visiting the branch. Surely, you visited the branch as a last resort. Not sure if @Finextra Member meant 'not looking forward' and 'last resort' in this way but, until you visited the branch, the problem didn't go away.

I'm not suggesting that banks should not invest in digital channels. My point, expressed in my three part personal blog post titled "Jumping On The Omnichannel Bandwagon", is only that each channel has certain unique strengths and banks should not ignore them. According to a recent CapGemini-EFMA Retail Banking report, customers consider Branch and Internet Banking as their primary channels.

I've been hearing for close to 10 years that security doesn't mean inconvenience and, as a vendor of security solutions, confess to saying the same thing for 6 out of those years. Unfortunately, friction just keeps mounting with greater security measures in actual practice. To me, greater friction caused by greater security is the biggest threat to increased adoption of the online channel, not the other way around. I think the American banks and e-tailers have realized this. So many years after mandate for it them was passed by FFIEC, most of them haven't bothered to implement 2FA. I haven't come across any figures suggesting that they suffer greater fraud loss as a percentage of transaction value compared to other countries that have implemented more stringent security.

"Retail bank marketers need to identify ways to apply the same level of personal touch and feel currently offered to retail branch customers through the online channel." Personal touch in a branch? Which bank's branch, which century, may I ask?

If 52% prefer Web, balance 48% would prefer Web, that accounts for 100%. From where does the "third of respondents" come from that considers "the branch their primary method of banking"? Whatever happened to phone, mobile and social media channels?

While minimizing friction in Internet Banking can undoubtedly foster greater adoption of the web channel, numbers in this survey simply don't add up. Personally, I might never visit a branch unless the bank forces me to visit it, but that's not necessarily a universal behavior.

I don't recall these views being expressed in the mainstream ten years ago, so you make my point about hindsight being 20/20 very well. Brussels didn't force anyone to join the EuroZone. It invited individual countries fulfilling certain conditions to join the EuroZone. Greece and other countries took the decision to join it just as UK decided not to join it. Brussels is not culpable and doesn't need to put up any defence. If anything, it's the governments in Greece and the other floundering countries in the EuroZone who should be on trial. They need to defend not only their past decision to join the EuroZone but also their present plight.

Hindsight is always 20/20, as they say. I used to live in the heart of the Euro - Frankfurt - when it was launched and I remember hearing very different things at the time. Instead of inequality, the Euro was expected to foster equality when combined with free labor markets within the larger EU region. This made sense then, it continues to make sense now. Besides, former currencies of now Eurozone countries were converted to EUR at non-uniform exchange rates - 2DM:1EUR and 6FFR:1EUR if I recall correctly - that reflected their respective strengths. Ten years later, it's another matter whether the expectations have materialized or not, but, for one, that's how I remember them and, for another, I won't blame Brussels for the alleged profligate behavior of Greece and a couple of other floundering nations in the Eurozone. 

Like Square, iZettle doesn't require its small business customers to have a merchant account. mPowa's pricing structure suggests that it does. Given that getting a merchant account directly from an acquirer bank is a major pain area for such businesses, iZettle shouldn't have any significant competition from mPowa.