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@BrettK: Good one, thanks! I bank with a couple of other banks. They use fully fledged implementations of 2FA - unlike the "my bank" of my blog post - and escape from the aforementioned ironies. However, they demonstrate a different, Newtonian type of irony: "Friction Skids Banking Rails".

@CJWimley: Thank you for elaborating. It'd be great if you could refer me to some whitepaper(s) on PBAD quant models.

Since the risk-based collections methodology pivots around PBAD, it's obvious that creditors have to get their PBADs right. Is there any methodology to quantify PBAD that is relatively free of subjective judgment?

We've also seen learning management systems proving very effective in getting debt collectors up to speed with collection-related tips-and-tricks, do's-and-dont's, and so on. This is especially true in large and geographically-dispered markets and during year-end collection drives. 

If Visa is taking such obviously-controversial steps, it'd appear that it has adequate coverage in its sponsorship contract to do so. In that case, a fair share of the blame for such inconveniences must go the organizers as well. Would be interesting to know the outcome of the last two furores related to ticket booking and card expiration date. 

Thanks for clarifying. I think there are two issues here: Mobile Wallet and Usability. Since you were able to manage your hotel booking via smartphone / tablet, am curious to know which mobile wallet is supported by your hotel booking website / app. Coming to usability, as I'd pointed out in my personal blog post "Will Mobile Blogs Impoverish Bloggers?", there are as many examples of good UX via mobile web as there are of bad UX via downloadable mobile apps. The lack of mobile booking solution for train ticket might harken back to deficiences even in the PC-Web solution and I doubt if mobile web or downloadable mobile app will have any bearing on UX. 

Okay, thanks. BIAN is still WIP and doesn't have mainstream adoption by European banks yet. So, a more pragmatic strategy for banks in Asia would be to skip BIAN altogether and leapfrog themselves to the next flavor of the season that is bound to follow BIAN in another few years. Asian banks have achieved competitive advantage with similar strategies in the past - as with skipping point solutions and leapfrogging into CBS and forsaking full-fledged multichannel support to take an early lead in omnichannel banking - and I see no reason why they should deviate from their course with BIAN now. 

By the same token, Japan has been running its trains and buses flawlessly for several decades, without closing down half its services for maintenance every weekend. Just as TfL can't get Japan's train and bus systems, it has to make do with the implementation of NFC that's available in the UK. To be fair to TfL, having done a fantastic job with Oyster contactless cards - I do love the way they work reliably even when they're not taken out from my wallet - I can very well understand its reluctance to jump into NFC. Apart from slow read speeds - at least in the UK implemenation - NFC means I've to take out my smartphone, select the appropriate app, fire it up and wait till it's ready. These are time-consuming and friction-filled steps that I can be spared. NFC is not just a solution chasing for a problem but something that introduces problems of its own that are absent with the status quo.

Comparing an electronic payment with a courier consignment and seeking transparency at all steps along the way somewhat obscures the fundamental difference between the two: Both in theory and in actual practice in some corridors (viz. TARGET2 nations), an electronic payment can happen in realtime, obviating the need for any transparency except for immediate notification of credit to the beneficiary's account. A parcel sent via courier cannot, even in theory, reach the destination in real time, thus needing tracking facility to provide a sense of comfort to the sender and the receiver. Given a choice between a payment that reaches the destination in 1 hour but offers zero transparency (e.g. Western Union) and another that takes 7 days - only because several parties earn float along the way - but provides full transparency, I'll any day prefer the former and even be prepared to pay a premium for it.

BTW, nonbank MTOs like Xoom do provide step-by-step tracking for international payments. But, when things go wrong, they take shelter behind the same alleged complexities of cross-border remittances as banks. I remember a USA-to-India transaction that I'd initiated over Xoom. The tracker showed healthy progress for the first 4 days (USA > UK > Germany > ...). Then, on the fifth day, all hell seemed to have broken loose since the tracker turned to something like "#*!@!argh!..., payment failed, returned to USA"!

Assuming that you can buy your train ticket and check your bank account balance via PC-Web, am curious to know if you could do them via mobile web from your smartphone / tablet. At least in the case of train ticket, the lack of mobile booking solution might harken back to deficiencies even in the PC-Web solution viz. lack of support for e-tickets and the need to print out a paper ticket from a kiosk that is not necessarily present in all stations. In an extreme example dating back a few years, I remember that a colleague of mine booked a ticket online for a train departing from London Bridge station but had to visit Waterloo / Victoria to print out the paper ticket because there was no 'Fast Terminal' at London Bridge!